/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3642073]

Hello /sci/

/lit/ here

I was thinking about writing a post-fist-contact hard science fiction novel. (I am in the very very early stages were the ideas are still clotting together in my head)

In my idea, aliens invade earth. Resistance is easily put down by their vast technological superiority. However, from a military strategist's and game theorist's perspective, the alien behavior is rather odd. Then one day, they just leave. after reverse engineering and scavenging through what they left behind, it is figured out that the aliens were just planet hopping as the US did to small islands in the pacific during WWII. The aliens that invaded us were in a war with another alien race, and we were just the primitive natives who looked at the alien technology and developed a cargo-cult around it.

What I want to know is if my idea for the alien's space ship propulsion is realistic. According to String theory, gravity is very weak compared to, say, magnetism because its string is a closed loop: it is free to leave this dimension/plane of existence, and move into others (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is also the basis for 'dark matter,' gravity from matter that doesn't exist in our universe seeps into it.). What the aliens do is, they somehow 'tunnel' into where ever this gravity goes, so that gravity across all planes effect their ship. When the alien ship is moving forward within a solar system, it's really just causing gravity to pull it in whatever direction it wants to go, and channels gravity in other directions away from itself.

how does this sound to you?

[Anonymous No.3642074]

>>3642073
> post-fist-contact

I'd read it.

[Anonymous No.3642077]

>post-fist

[Anonymous No.3642084]

>>3642074
Samefagging. For serious this time.

If they can get to Earth, they don't need to planet hop. We would be SO FAR out of their way it's ridiculous. The rest is pseudo-science babble. Most good sci-fi books/stories don't explain how they do FTL (faster than light) travel. They just use vague terms so they don't get called out on it.

Premise: Passable. Aliens would regard us as wildlife. That's about all.

[Anonymous No.3642083]

>aliens, string theory, game theory
>hard science fiction

[Anonymous No.3642086]

That's a great idea and all, but you just spoiled the be reveal for us.

[Anonymous No.3642098]

>>3642084
Samefagging again. Go and read some Iain M Banks and look at how the Culture travels. Now you also need to realise that it's set in a world where life-supporting planets are within earshot of each other.

Earth is not one of these.

[Anonymous No.3642102]

>>3642084
>If they can get to Earth, they don't need to planet hop.
That could easily be justified as them securing a volume of space by going from solar system to solar system.

[Anonymous No.3642103]

>>3642086
that's actually the backstory. What its about is humanity becomes space-fairing thanks to reverse engineering and then tries to explore space/reestablish contact with the aliens on equal terms.

The aliens, when they meet humans, are very suprised and have trouble wrapping their heads around how humanity could have reverse engineered their technology so quickly. The aliens, as it turns out -- rather than the typical 'hivemind' we usually see -- are 'anarchists:' there is so little neuro-diversity that they all pretty much think the same. Their ships don't have captains, for example, because they all just sit down (for lack of a better word) and do their jobs without the need for someone to tell them what to do.

[Anonymous No.3642107]

>>3642102
> arriving and leaving
> securing

Pick one.

[Anonymous No.3642112]

>>3642102
>>3642098

My biggest inspirations right now are just having finished Sphere by Micheal Chrichton and Blindsight by Peter Watts.

The reason that the aliens need to planet hop is because 1)rescources 2) their propulsion system. It works on gravity and can warp space like a wormhole. However, when make this wormholes, it is extremely inefficient to simply make a hole going from point A to point B. The best way of doing things would be to 'anchor' these holes in a preexisting gravity well, such as that of a solar-system

[Anonymous No.3642119]

>>3642103
For someone from /lit/ you know fuck all about good sci-fi.

Aliens and space ships and pew pew laser fights are all tertiary. Sci-fi tackles "What is humanity?" or rather "What does it mean to be human?" first and then there are politics/religion/war/etc secondary.

Cyberpunk and trans-humanism, The Borg, Culture, cloning, artificial intelligence, teleportation... All delve into the meaning of humanity and how far/close from/to human can you get before humanity is achieved. Then, explain your answer.

[No.3642132]

>>3642073

OP, if whatever explanation you find was possible, we would already be doing or trying to do it. Just spout out some techno babble and be done with it.

[Anonymous No.3642138]

>>3642119
the whole thing about 'what is humanity' IS the big question of the book. the stuff I'm talking about here is the secondary, but its what I don't understand as well so I'm asking about the technical /sci/ related stuff on this board because it is /sci/. what I DON'T want is it to turn into HURR USE TEH WARP DRIVES LETS MEETS TEH ALIENS WHO LOOK LIEK HOOMANS BUT WITH WEIRD BIG FOREHEADS AND HAS CONVERSATIONS IN PERFECT ENGLISH

[Anonymous No.3642147]

>>3642138
See >>3642084
> Most good sci-fi books/stories don't explain how they do FTL (faster than light) travel. They just use vague terms so they don't get called out on it.

If you try to explain it in too much detail people are going to see right through it. Just call it a Gravity Well Drive and be done with it. People will get the gist of it and assume that the aliens worked something out.

By explaining it yourself, you're contradicting the fact that humans don't understand their technology.

[Anonymous No.3642156]

>>3642103
Oh. That's cool too I guess, but the first one would've been wicked. Seeming like the usual aliens attack type story, and having all the usual questions of why an alien race would come here just to pick on us, and then at the end replacing the usual humans kicking ass ending with a unique and unexpected explanation of the invaders motives.

[Anonymous No.3642169]

That sounds too complex and boring. They shall collect tiny particles from space as they move and shoot them forward using electricity.

[Anonymous No.3642178]

>>3642098

Samefag detected.

Also, it sounds like a good idea.

Maybe add some vampires and werewolf romance, and you could be rich!

[Anonymous No.3642194]

>mfw I would read the fuck out of OP's book but everyone else hates it

[Anonymous No.3642223]

>>3642156
One of the things with this is I wanted the aliens that invaded us to end up becoming basically humanities greatest friends in space, using their differences between us as a mirror of sorts to look at the nature of humanity. The aliens that invaded us, however, are extremely different from humans, but are still the closest to us compared to all the others. The race that they were fighting when they invaded earth was a highly territorial and aggressive species (they live the 'roam and rape' type lifestyle, like orangutans, they discover nukes after they become space-fairing and end up glassing their planet, becoming a nomadic species that only work with each other to kill outside threats) so it was very lucky that we were invaded by them and not the other guys.

My idea is that these aliens have five limbs, whose hands have one 'finger' in the middle and two 'thumbs.' They speak to each other with bio-luminescent skin that can flash like on a cutlefish. They smell noise, and hear smells. They also don't see themselves as standing on the ground but hanging from it: they see everything upside down, so to them, they veiw gravity as sucking them to the surface.

The problem with aliens in scifi is that in order for them to travel to other systems, they will be so advanced that they are beyond our comprehension. However, this assumes that they develop like humans do.. The aliens, for example, are masters of light and gravity, but they barely understand electromagnetism any better than we do. for example, they barely understand maxwell's equations and prefer to use fiber optics over electrical wiring. because of their lack of neurodiversity, they weren't able to find solutions to the problems of electromagnetism beyond the basic generation of power to run machines, even though to us it was quite simple

does this sound believable to you?

[Anonymous No.3642238]

>>3642223
>They smell noise, and hear smells

I assume what you're saying here is that their sense of smell is higher and their sense of hearing is lower in comparison to ours, so that the importance of the two for them in sensing their surroundings is reversed.

[Anonymous No.3642242]

>>3642223

>they smell noise, and hear smells
>mfw

[Anonymous No.3642250]

>>3642242
>>3642238
I was thinking more along the lines of what would be called synesthesia when it happens in humans. They perceive different sounds as we would perceive scents.

I don't get what's so wrong with that; did I go full retard?

[Anonymous No.3642264]

>>3642250
As long as you word it that way

Protip: Don't

[Anonymous No.3642265]

>>3642250
Synesthesia only makes sense for us because it reverses our brain's normal interpretation of stimulus. If that's how they normal interpret that stimulus, there's no real translation that way. It's just like how kids and stoners ask "how do I know my blue isn't completely different from your blue man?"

Either way, this means that they have some receptors for particles that tell them about scents which we could only ever accurately describe as "smelling", and some receptors for compression waves that tells them about sounds which could only be "hearing".

Unless you have a scene where a alien lets a person inside their brain and that human notes the difference.

[Anonymous No.3642282]

>>3642265
I'm also reminded of an experiment here where a subject is given a pair of goggles to wear which inverts the light they see (left becomes right, and/or up becomes down).

And while it does become disorienting at first, with the subject finding it difficult to even grasp objects, over the course of an extended period of use it becomes normal and they are unhindered by the vision reversal.
Until they take the goggles off, and then must spend a similar amount of time readjusting to their old vision.

[Anonymous No.3642294]

Smell detects chemical presence. Hearing detects only sound's frequency and amplitude. See the difference? If you 'heard' smells, then you'd lose most of the relevant information.

[Anonymous No.3642355]

what would you guys think if part of the plot involved space-fairing muslims declaring jihad on the aliens and almost completely fucking up humanity's relationship with them

[Anonymous No.3642371]

>>3642355
KILL THE XENO

[Anonymous No.3642388]

Your story sounds cliche as fuck OP. I got an idea. Your alien is a box. Write something around that. Five limbs and two thumbs ain't gonna cut it.

[Anonymous No.3642410]

Never try to explain the science in sci-fi. Take Philip K. Dick for example. The guy knew fuckall about real science, but he was one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time. Good sci-fi doesn't focus on technology; it focuses on human themes and uses an alternate, but feasible, reality only to assist a humanity-centric narrative.

[Anonymous No.3642426]

OP desperately needs to read the Uplift novels.

[Anonymous No.3642428]

>>3642410
What about blindsight? that went really in-depth with all the science stuff, but it was still entirely about the nature of humanity

[Anonymous No.3642434]

>>3642410
This. 1000 times this. Explanation is what ruins 99% of fantasy books and sci-fi books. When was the last time you explained anything to anyone in day-to-day life?

[Anonymous No.3642446]

to all the people saying this isn't 'hard' scienefiction
how does this not tell something of humanity.
earth is but a minuscule island in a gigantic ocean.
HUMAN EGO MAYNE
also good endings are for faggots.
do more research as to how natives react when the cargo no longer comes.

[Anonymous No.3642482]

>>3642446
>do more research as to how natives react when the cargo no longer comes.

This wouldn't exactly be the same situation. There's a huge difference between natives who have no other explanations except 'dem gods' and cultures who have sent rockets to other planets and written elaborate stories about meeting aliens.

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642489]

>>3642083
aliens are virtually hard /sci/fi if done right. No telepathy or telekinesis, no morphing, no gravity on spaceships, and you're all good.

[Anonymous No.3642512]

>>3642482
How do you mean? I thought the way that cargo-cults worked was that they worshiped the technology NOT the americans using it, believing that the americans were perverting the technology of the gods for their own ends

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642525]

>>3642512
...and do we do anything like that?
ever?

[Anonymous No.3642559]

>some 100 posts arguing about various things
>nobody tells OP that what he just wrote was a bunch of pseudo-science worthy of kaku

[Anonymous No.3642592]

just write your story and if it has a good enough premise and prose that isn't painful people will read it

look at iain M banks he just wrote pure techno babble for his universe and he freely admits it was rubbish. nobody cares. just write it

for all of the posturing here about bad sci fi, when these morons have the book in their hands 99% of them will enjoy just about anything

case in point: look at how many people praise the hyperion series

[Anonymous No.3642602]

>aliens
>hard science fiction

[Anonymous No.3642610]

>/sci/ says to include no science in your science fiction
>nobody on /sci/ has ever read a lem novel

That's pretty sad.

[Anonymous No.3642622]

>>3642602
I dont' get why you guys keep saying aliens in science fiction is so unrealistic

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642635]

>>3642622
strictly speaking, it's not hard scifi. We don't know if life has arisen anywhere else in the universe, nor are we in a position to assume that there is.

[Anonymous No.3642728]

>>3642512
Oh, well in the sense that we'll believe we deserve that technology more than them, and that we should do everything short of actually making it ourselves to get it, yeah I can see that.

[Anonymous No.3642743]

>>3642622
strictly speaking, /sci/ isn't the place you come for inspiration to write a novel.
it's a place where you finally understand why engineers are homosexual and have such a high suicide rate.

[Anonymous No.3642749]

>>3642635
>universe is infinite
>been over 4 billion years by our estimates
>belief that humans are the only intelligent species to ever exist
olookevangelicalchristianityhasinfectedsciencetosurive.jpeg

[Anonymous No.3642820]

>>3642749
>universe is infinite
[citation needed]

>been over 4 billion years by our estimates
Considerably over the earth itself is 13 billion

>belief that humans are the only intelligent species to ever exist
No, its agnosticism, but writing about it like its a certainty can hardly be called "hard" science fiction. The statistical probabilities which would lead to the creation of intelligent life could be anything from one in a million down to 1 / universe. Add to that the vast improbability of any two species growing up so close to each other that they could just pop over and chat without magic.

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642822]

>>3642749
What are you comparing these facts to.
What you're saying is equivalent to "There are 6 billion humans, what are the chances that just ONE of them was jesus"

[Anonymous No.3642825]

>>3642820
fuck, i didn't write that correctly, the age of the earth is 4 billion, the age of the universe is estimated at 13 billion

[Anonymous No.3642833]

>>3642820
drake equation is for one galaxy.
not a universe.

enjoy your creation story and magical interconnected everything 'god' particles.

[Anonymous No.3642843]

>>3642822
last i checked 6 billion was a finite number.

[Anonymous No.3642847]

>>3642833
what the fuck are you talking about? I never invoked that shitty pseudoscience arbitrary "equation."

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642848]

>>3642843
Last I checked the universe isn't infinite

[Anonymous No.3642850]

>>3642848
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.3642856]

>post-fist-contact

[Anonymous No.3642858]

>>3642848
Last time you checked, 0.999... = 1 in every possible field of analysis, too.

[Anonymous No.3642867]

>but writing about it like its a certainty can hardly be called "hard" science fiction.

yes. Its fiction. In my novel, it just happens to be a universe in which alien life does indeed exist. What don't you understand about fiction? that's like bitching about any novel at all, because it didn't happen for real. what makes this hard sci-fi is that the aliens aren't some dude in a rubber suit that behaves exactly like humans do. hard sci-fi aliens in this case means entirely different biology, entirely different cultrue, entirely different biology, and entirely different technology in a way that can be explained in a scientific fashion

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642872]

>>3642850
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
>>3642858
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.3642881]

>>3642872
the theory of an infinite universe was just as valid before the crackpot christian scientists decided the big bang was the way to go.
>creation story.

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642889]

>>3642881
Hawking, Penrose, and a shit-ton of other atheist scientists would disagree.

[Anonymous No.3642896]

>>3642889
an appeal to authority is an appeal to authority.
the 'greatest scientific minds' don't hold up to time.

[None !/oddSpacew No.3642907]

>>3642896
You are <span class="math"> such [/spoiler] a bitch.

[Anonymous No.3642909]

>>3642896
lrn 2 logic

that's not an appeal to authority. the people he listed are credible in their field and know more about the subject at hand than you do.
as far as sci-fi goes, has ANYONE here read Blindsight or Sphere? you guys do read, don't you?

[Anonymous No.3642914]

>>3642867
But then its just fiction, or science-fiction as the case may be, but its given up all claims of being "hard" now I don't know why you'd want to read or write hard sci-fi but there it is.

[Anonymous No.3642919]

>>3642909
same theory from the same people: string theory.
if the string theory is true, big bang breaks.
onoes wat will we do without the creation story.
fucking humans thinking everything is finite.

[Anonymous No.3643000]

Getting to the Big Bang is as simple as taking the fact that universe is expanding, and extrapolating backwards.

How does String Theory break that again?

[Anonymous No.3643026]

can we get back to the topic at hand?


Would it be possible for a roughly man sized being to breath Hydrogen (hydrogen-helium atmosphere) or would anaerobic respiration not be able to support a creature of that size?

[Anonymous No.3643032]

>>3643026
yes.
of course the being wouldn't exactly be similar on the inside to a human.