Worldcon: Friday
18 Aug 2017 19:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguinThey started moving stuff into bigger rooms on Friday. Here are my notes:
10: Fantasy Warfare Not Based on Medieval Methods (Alter S. Reiss, Madeleine E. Robins, Rebecca Slitt, Arkady Martine)
Medieval armies were nearly always less than 2k people; classical sources are prone to exaggeration.
Medieval system: no rank system – personal loyalty to lord (often forgotten in fantasy)
Roman legions were repeatable and organized, more of an army and less of a collection of fighting units
The Byzantium is often ignored, and Turtledove's alt-histories were recced
Early modern warfare (up to WW1) included some pre-arrangement of where and when to meet, and the shape of the battle.
City walls indicate siege warfare, and are obsolete with airplanes. And dragons. How does one defend a castle against flying dragons? Walls are useless.
Adding magic changes the defense and thus the structure of cities and, y'know, the whole social order.
If communication is better, then statebuilding is easier. Empires are limitated by the speed of news. Yet no-one decides to use magitek for communication.
12: Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth (William Ledbetter, Pat McEwen, Laurel Anne Hill)
Adding ammonia to water means it's a liquid for a larger temperature range. Ammonia is both a biotoxin and a biological side product.
Water vapor as a medium for life on frex Venus & Jupiter?
Life started as biochemistry on an interface sequestered from the environment – perhaps an ice crack?
Oceans discovered by using spectrography or a magnetometer to see if something's moving. (INSAR)
Europa's oceans: salty, acidic, low-g, high pressure diffrential, huge tidal flex.
An artificial heat source would generate a heat rush stampede -> how to explore without distruction? Ethical questions re: sterilization and contamination. What if we blind the locals?
Potential stuff Europans may have includes bioluminescence and electrosensors.
Apparently some organisms derive energy from gradients in an electric field?
There may be a small liquid ocean on Pluto! Liquid nitrogen floating atop ice or liquid oxygen.
Sulfur reducers, ammonia makers and ammonia eaters create a pH of about 2.8 (similar to Europa's oceans!) and on Earth, dissolve sewers. They also make pyrite? Glass sponge chemistry would work at Europan pHs.
We have discovered eaters of radioactive decay and electricity.
2014, we discovered an underground ocean of ringwoodite on Earth.
The best way to investigate exoplanet atmospheres would be a huge intereferometer telescope on the far side of the Moon.
16: Economics of SF Universes (Yehuda Porath)
Economics: the optimal use of resources – aka maximise utility, given a limited resource.
Non-scarce resources: supply not a constraint, or adding more wouldn't affect the end result.
Groups (such as markets) need coordination (or, problem-solving by governments). Regulations can prevent monopolies and common-pool problems.
Near singularities (in time and space), all economics is local.
(This was mostly a "fluff"/"headdesk at various fictional universes" presentation.)
18: Proxima Centauri b (Michael Reid, G. David Nordley, Julie Novakova)
reddots.space for news on the hunt for planets around red dwarfs!
Prox b is at a minimum 1.3 Earth masses, probably tidally locked (or in a 2:3 resonance like Mercury), not transiting from Earth's POV, gets 65% of Earth's insolation (but since it's more IR, it's effectively the same as Earth's)
Prox is a flare star, so the planet's gonna have an extreme environment. (By its slow rotation, Proxima is old. By its active flaring, Proxima is young. All in all, Proxima is unique.)
If Prox b has a magnetosphere, it might have aurorae, which cause radio emissions, which could be picked up on Earth and give knowledge on the atmosphere.
Gliese 1132 has a transiting planet with >13×Prox b's insolation. And it has atmosphere!
Prox b may be a super-Earth (or a mini-Neptune?) and may have high-pressure ice at the bottom of the ocean, which could block geobiological cycles necessary for life.
Even if Prox b is tidally locked (rather than in a 2:3 resonance), it'd still wobble (due to nutation). Perhaps it'd be a tidal Venus: volcanically active, an outgassing greenhouse.
Exo-Venuses may confuse search for life: water vapor is broken down by stellar radiation into hydrogen and oxygen gases, of which the hydrogen is blown off and the free oxygen remains, despite having an abiological origin.
Space telescopes are too small to see the planet, so VLT to the rescue with a spectrum?
A biosignature: the red edge – photosynthesizing plants absorb a certain wavelength.
Convincing biosignatures: a radio message sent by sentients.
Rec: Rocheworld by Robert Forward. (Proxima by Stephen Baxter is a treatment of Proxima Centauri b's potential lifeforms.)
Habitable zones on tidally locked planets are certainly possible, if there's a thick atmosphere or oceans to act as heat reservoirs. Even outside the star's official habitable zone, an eyeball ocean planet would be possible.
19:30: Hugo Awards
I had fun and didn't take notes. One thing I voted for won!
10: Fantasy Warfare Not Based on Medieval Methods (Alter S. Reiss, Madeleine E. Robins, Rebecca Slitt, Arkady Martine)
Medieval armies were nearly always less than 2k people; classical sources are prone to exaggeration.
Medieval system: no rank system – personal loyalty to lord (often forgotten in fantasy)
Roman legions were repeatable and organized, more of an army and less of a collection of fighting units
The Byzantium is often ignored, and Turtledove's alt-histories were recced
Early modern warfare (up to WW1) included some pre-arrangement of where and when to meet, and the shape of the battle.
City walls indicate siege warfare, and are obsolete with airplanes. And dragons. How does one defend a castle against flying dragons? Walls are useless.
Adding magic changes the defense and thus the structure of cities and, y'know, the whole social order.
If communication is better, then statebuilding is easier. Empires are limitated by the speed of news. Yet no-one decides to use magitek for communication.
12: Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth (William Ledbetter, Pat McEwen, Laurel Anne Hill)
Adding ammonia to water means it's a liquid for a larger temperature range. Ammonia is both a biotoxin and a biological side product.
Water vapor as a medium for life on frex Venus & Jupiter?
Life started as biochemistry on an interface sequestered from the environment – perhaps an ice crack?
Oceans discovered by using spectrography or a magnetometer to see if something's moving. (INSAR)
Europa's oceans: salty, acidic, low-g, high pressure diffrential, huge tidal flex.
An artificial heat source would generate a heat rush stampede -> how to explore without distruction? Ethical questions re: sterilization and contamination. What if we blind the locals?
Potential stuff Europans may have includes bioluminescence and electrosensors.
Apparently some organisms derive energy from gradients in an electric field?
There may be a small liquid ocean on Pluto! Liquid nitrogen floating atop ice or liquid oxygen.
Sulfur reducers, ammonia makers and ammonia eaters create a pH of about 2.8 (similar to Europa's oceans!) and on Earth, dissolve sewers. They also make pyrite? Glass sponge chemistry would work at Europan pHs.
We have discovered eaters of radioactive decay and electricity.
2014, we discovered an underground ocean of ringwoodite on Earth.
The best way to investigate exoplanet atmospheres would be a huge intereferometer telescope on the far side of the Moon.
16: Economics of SF Universes (Yehuda Porath)
Economics: the optimal use of resources – aka maximise utility, given a limited resource.
Non-scarce resources: supply not a constraint, or adding more wouldn't affect the end result.
Groups (such as markets) need coordination (or, problem-solving by governments). Regulations can prevent monopolies and common-pool problems.
Near singularities (in time and space), all economics is local.
(This was mostly a "fluff"/"headdesk at various fictional universes" presentation.)
18: Proxima Centauri b (Michael Reid, G. David Nordley, Julie Novakova)
reddots.space for news on the hunt for planets around red dwarfs!
Prox b is at a minimum 1.3 Earth masses, probably tidally locked (or in a 2:3 resonance like Mercury), not transiting from Earth's POV, gets 65% of Earth's insolation (but since it's more IR, it's effectively the same as Earth's)
Prox is a flare star, so the planet's gonna have an extreme environment. (By its slow rotation, Proxima is old. By its active flaring, Proxima is young. All in all, Proxima is unique.)
If Prox b has a magnetosphere, it might have aurorae, which cause radio emissions, which could be picked up on Earth and give knowledge on the atmosphere.
Gliese 1132 has a transiting planet with >13×Prox b's insolation. And it has atmosphere!
Prox b may be a super-Earth (or a mini-Neptune?) and may have high-pressure ice at the bottom of the ocean, which could block geobiological cycles necessary for life.
Even if Prox b is tidally locked (rather than in a 2:3 resonance), it'd still wobble (due to nutation). Perhaps it'd be a tidal Venus: volcanically active, an outgassing greenhouse.
Exo-Venuses may confuse search for life: water vapor is broken down by stellar radiation into hydrogen and oxygen gases, of which the hydrogen is blown off and the free oxygen remains, despite having an abiological origin.
Space telescopes are too small to see the planet, so VLT to the rescue with a spectrum?
A biosignature: the red edge – photosynthesizing plants absorb a certain wavelength.
Convincing biosignatures: a radio message sent by sentients.
Rec: Rocheworld by Robert Forward. (Proxima by Stephen Baxter is a treatment of Proxima Centauri b's potential lifeforms.)
Habitable zones on tidally locked planets are certainly possible, if there's a thick atmosphere or oceans to act as heat reservoirs. Even outside the star's official habitable zone, an eyeball ocean planet would be possible.
19:30: Hugo Awards
I had fun and didn't take notes. One thing I voted for won!
no subject
Date: 2017-08-19 10:00 (UTC)The economics panel sounds fun. Do you remember any examples of especially headdesk-worthy universe examples?
no subject
Date: 2017-08-19 17:46 (UTC)