[ufvwbbvz] Predator vs. Native Americans

Prey (2022) presented a neat concept.  fanfic, attempting to improve (despite not having watched the movie):

backstories, not sure what order they should go in.

Predator hunts a grizzly bear.  Predator struggles mightily but is victorious.  (because grizzly bears are monstrously strong, monumentally tough animals.)  (mostly unrelated comment from elsewhere: is it wrong to root for the bear in The Revenant?)  depower Predator as necessary so that the fight is close: Predators of this era have yet to develop all the technologies seen in the 1987 film.  it takes its hard-won bear skull as a trophy.

a Comanche hunting group hunts anything but a bear (that comes later).  the group is mostly male and is lead by a male, but the protagonist, Naru, is one of several female hunters in the group.  the group treats the inclusion of females as completely unremarkable.  Naru demonstrates extraordinary skill.  the hunting group leader retires.  the tribe chooses Naru to be their new hunting leader by universal acclamation based on respect for her skill.

the retired hunting group leader mentors Naru on leadership and teaches her more hunting wisdom.  this all establishes context that the group functions well, including transferring knowledge.  perhaps there is a little bit of gender commentary: the elders note that it has been many generations since the hunting group has been lead by a female, but it is not without precedent.  it has been foretold that when a female rises to leader, something special will happen.

Naru leads the group to hunt a grizzly bear, because reasons.  unlike Predator's earlier struggle, the Comanche are efficient and effective.  they use teamwork; they use terrain to their advantage; they anticipate the grizzly's behavior; they get maximum effectiveness out of their weapons and technology.  the grizzly never stands a chance.  perhaps Predator in camouflage witnesses the hunt.  perhaps this is the moment it decides that humans, not grizzlies, (not xenomorphs), are the most worthy opponents on the planet, or in the universe.

the Comanche take and use all parts of the grizzly.

despite having killed the grizzly smoothly, Naru reviews the hunt, identifies weaknesses and inefficiencies, and works -- leads -- at correcting and improving them.  the contrasting grizzly hunts foreshadow that the Comanche are going to win the plot-inevitable battle against Predator.  perhaps the audience even wonders how badly Predator is going to get destroyed by this well functioning hunting team.

(this mirrors the setup of the 1987 film.  Predator did not go up against a random group of humans, but rather a competent military team.)

Predator goes (FTL is involved) and gets some tech upgrades, so maybe it won't be defeated so badly.  the upgraded Predator steps off its ship and the showdown begins, or so it believes.

surprise, the Comanche, in part through Naru's extraordinary perception, have already long been aware of Predator, both from the obvious clue of the decapitated abandoned bear carcass from earlier, and through using their tracking skills to discern Predator's presence, behavior, abilities, and habits, despite its camouflage.  this was one of the reasons Naru pushed her team to keep getting better, even though their grizzly hunt had been a walk in the park.  they have already deduced much about Predator despite no direct interaction.  perhaps they have modified the environment to their advantage, constructing traps.

surprise, one of the first things the Comanche do is disable Predator's ship, having deduced its existence, capabilities, and weaknesses.  Predator is now trapped on the planet.  both parties must now kill or be killed.  who is predator?  who is prey?  title card drop.

action happens, the Comanche win, yay.  coup de grace is delivered by a bear.  legacy, denouement, etc.

perhaps a subplot about even though hunting is glorious, killing kills a little bit of your soul each time.

post-credits humor: Predator has an easy time killing idiotic French fur traders in Rube Goldberg-style human traps.

meta gender commentary: is it better to depict a world functioning well without gender discrimination, or a world with discrimination but women battling it and succeeding?  our fanfic does the first, original Prey did the second.  (Star Trek did the first and was lauded for it.)  in original Prey, the protagonist having to simultaneously fight the patriarchy and Predator, and succeeding against both stretches credulity.  but our fanfic invites accusations of Mary Sue (future post ihbpggqd).

[uvdxqfqy] intelligent gravitational waves of the weekday commute

the weekday commute of humans on earth is a large movement of mass.  this movement, because it is not spherically symmetric, generates gravitational waves.

our movement is somewhat periodic but not quite: weekends, Daylight Saving Time, holidays, leap days, and leap seconds cause deviation.  distant aliens with very sensitive gravitational wave detectors could observe these deviations from periodicity and determine that the source must be intelligent life: a civilization sophisticated enough to coordinate their actions with a calendar.  many holidays, and the start and end of DST, are engineered to fall on a certain day of the week so are more complicated than yearly periodic.  Easter (computus) is even more complicated, but it always occurs of a Sunday, so it probably does not affect people commuting to work.  but maybe other holidays of major religions.

perhaps aliens will wonder what happened on Earth in March 2020 that caused our gravitational wave emissions to suddenly decrease.  but those waves have yet to even reach Alpha Centauri.

our weekday commute being somewhat periodic and repeated many times helps boost signal to noise, though our signal will likely be dwarfed by (say) a pair of black holes, somewhere in the universe, orbiting each other with a period of 1 day (generating a gravitational wavefront every half day, mimicking to the round trip of a daily commute).  a pair of supermassive black holes, each 1 million solar masses, circularly orbiting around each other at a distance of 2.47 au or 125 Schwarzschild radii would produce such waves:

You have: ((day / (2 pi))^2 G (1 mega sunmass)*2)^(1|3)
You want: au
* 2.4657235

You have: ((day / (2 pi))^2 gauss_k^2 au^3 day^-2 (1 mega)*2)^(1|3)
You want: au
* 2.4657235

You have: ((day / (2 pi))^2 gauss_k^2 au^3 day^-2 (1 mega)*2)^(1|3) 
You want: 1 mega sunmass 2 gauss_k^2 au^3 day^-2 c^-2 / sunmass 
* 124.90205

instead of the gravitational constant G, the second and third calculations use the standard gravitational parameter which is known to greater precision than G.

our weekday commute is much less than millions of solar masses.

is it appropriate to use the Newtonian formula of orbital period?  how quickly do the orbits of such a pair of black holes decay?  (do the black holes change faster than the commuting behavior of human civilization?)  what is the expected number of binary systems with this period in the observable universe, i.e., how loud is the background noise at this frequency?

previously on using a single car as a gravitational wave generator.

[glwhkqjk] detecting life on earth

the Galileo probe flew by earth on its way to Jupiter and detected in our atmosphere both oxygen and methane, thereby "proving" the existence of life on earth.  (actually science can never prove anything; it can only disprove things.)  life, replenishing the methane (e.g., cows farting), is the simplest explanation for why the oxygen hasn't oxidized all the methane over geologic time scales.  (life also replenishes the oxygen via photosynthesis.  actually, photosynthesis, reducing carbon dioxide back to carbon, also does the key first step of producing methane.)

how easy is it to replicate this Galileo probe experiment on earth?  detecting oxygen in the atmosphere is probably pretty easy.  is spectroscopy the easiest?  or, you could burn something then prove that the burnt product is the oxide of your input.

detecting and measuring the tiny amount of methane seems much more challenging.  what is the best way?  there are off-the-shelf methane-measurement devices.  how do they work?  (how might they fail if the atmosphere were completely different?)

an alien astronomer testing whether earth is suitable for life -- suitable for invasion and colonization -- would need to remotely detect the methane (and oxygen) in our atmosphere, probably through spectroscopy.  consider limiting earthbound experiments detecting oxygen and methane only to remote-sensing techniques available to alien astronomers.

[jreqmrik] real pulsar manipulation

old and busted: pulsars are Little Green Men.

new hotness: pulsar glitches are Little Green Men.  a Kardashev Type II civilization shows off its technological prowess by manipulating the rotation rate of a neutron star, perhaps to broadcast information (or to mine neutronium).

here on earth, a pulsar manipulation device is a mundane device for stealing gasoline from gas pumps.

[nytpgjcj] LGM pulsar names

it's a shame that astronomers settled on "PSR + celestial coordinates" as their systematic way of naming pulsars in the sky.  much more fun would have been "LGM + celestial coordinates", a nod to one of the more outlandish theories proposed when pulsars were first discovered.

Little Green Men are modern mythology, so would seamlessly join all the ancient mythology that already provides names for many astronomical objects.

[bcwsjhxx] intelligent schools of lantern fish

lanternfish exist in extremely large numbers and communicate with each other via bioluminescence.  this seems enough components for a brain.  each fish acts like a neuron or transistor.  there probably needs to be some way for fish to relay signals between two fish not within line of sight of each other.

are they collectively intelligent?  if not, why not?  if thought does happen, it likely happens very slowly.

what other collections of organisms might be intelligent?  insect colonies.  "The Hidden Life of Trees" and "Mother Tree".  Gaia hypothesis.  collective intelligence might not be made of biological components.

[rfsokmxi] intelligent life simulates Turing machines

define intelligence as the combination of the ability to simulate a Turing machine (or equivalent) and the regular use of that ability.

there remains a lot of fuzziness in the definition, but "Turing machine or equivalent" is at least precisely defined, thanks to computer science.

humans of course simulate Turing machines in silicon, but also do it in vivo.  instructions to perform music, do choreographed dance, perform military operations, cook food, or build buildings and cities are usually expressed in a Turing-complete language, often natural language.  ("communicating via a Turing-complete natural language" could be a related definition of intelligence.)

empathy could also be considered a form of Turing machine simulation.  simulate what the other person is thinking, then use the results of that simulation to guide your actions.

imagination.

what other organisms, or collections of organisms (future post bcwsjhxx), are intelligent?

simulating intelligent life, by this definition, perhaps for a game, is not difficult.

[ryarmtqr] nature inheriting human technology

suppose humans go extinct and nature inherits the earth.  but nature does not inherit a natural earth; it inherits an earth littered with the remains of human technology.  will any organism exploit our technology?  will any evolve intelligence fast enough to do intelligent things like read our books before time destroys all the cool stuff?

(previously on nature having to recover from whatever caused human extinction.)

organisms might enjoy waste heat from our abandoned nuclear reactors and other nuclear waste for a very long time, like underwater geothermal vents.  will they figure out how to (safely) restart reactors?

[cmhcxppr] vegan

the pronunciation of vegan as "vee-gan" not "vay-gan" is peculiar, as the pronunciation of e in vegetable and vegetarian is closer to the latter.

perhaps extraterrestrials from Vega influenced our language, steering us away from the pronunciation that would cause ambiguity.

original thought, inspired by Sliders: one can tell if a civilization has discovered FTL by the pronunciation of that word.  (idea adapted from some other source, don't remember what.)

"vay-jan"

[gvwajntv] Anthropocene Park

the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park escape confinement, kill all humans, and establish a second great age of dinosaurs.

many years later, the dinosaurs have evolved intelligence (clever girl), grow humans in test tubes (their guess of what humans were like, biased toward what they find entertaining), and create a theme park housing them.  does history repeat itself, or do they avoid making the same mistake their creators made?

or, the exit sign to Jurassic Park says "welcome to Anthropocene Park".

or, we live in Anthropocene Park right now; we're to dumb to notice the walls.

[qmawdkcr] Prime Directive

preserve the illusion of free will.

why?  how?

perhaps we live in a simulation.

[uhbwprxu] no alien invasion already

alien astronomers would have been able to detect the Great Oxidation Event on earth spectroscopically, determine the planet is hospitable to life, and embark on a invasion/colonization campaign.  they have had somewhere between 850 million and 2.5 billion years to travel.  (when could oxygen have been detected?  would the alien astronomers have had to wait for all other oxygen sinks (oceans, rocks) to be exhausted before they began to see oxygen accumulating in the atmosphere?)  assuming the aliens had to travel 50,000 light years (halfway across the galaxy) and took 1 billion years, that's 15 km/sec, same speed as New Horizons, easily achievable with conventional rockets, no exotic sci-fi propulsion necessary.  invading from Andromeda is not that much more difficult, requiring 750 km/s or 0.0025c (assuming galaxies don't move, which is false over a billion years).

several possibilities why we haven't been invaded (trying to explain the Fermi paradox):

1. there are a great many other worlds with detectable oxygen and other biomarkers indicating that they are hospitable to life, so earth does not especially stand out as an invasion target.  next generation telescopes may soon be able to confirm or eliminate this possibility.
2. it is difficult to observe that earth is hospitable to life.  maybe there are only a few lines of sight not obscured by gas and dust of the Milky Way, and those lines have not overlapped with aliens' telescopes.  does the earth need to eclipse the sun to do spectroscopy?  if so, that limits the lines of sight even further.
3. there is no other intelligent life in the Local Group.
4. building starships, warships, and colonization fleets that can survive billion-year journeys is difficult.

[ustucvin] Gravitational wave music of the spheres

Ancient philosophy posited that the planets were embedded in crystal spheres which made music as they moved.  Gravitational waves are exactly that music.

Do astroengineering to create a system that plays a song, probably slowed down in time by a huge factor.

[ezmpildy] Intragalactic versus intergalactic

The distance between galaxies seems not that much greater than the size of galaxies.  Milky Way diameter 100,000 ly.  Distance to Andromeda 2.5 million ly, so scale factor of 25.  This means (maybe) that after becoming a galactic civilization, it's not that much more difficult to then become an intergalactic civilization.  Star Trek (and others) are unrealistic in limiting themselves to just one galaxy.

Compare this with other cosmic distances:

Half-circumference of earth (farthest possible distance between any two points on earth): 20,000 km.  Minimum distance to Mars: 55 million km.  Scale factor 2750.  Going from being a planetary civilization to being an interplanetary civilization is difficult.

Size of solar system, defined by semimajor axis of Neptune's orbit: 4.5e9 km.  Distance to Alpha Centauri: 4e13 km.  Scale factor 9000.  Going from being a solar-system spanning civilization to being an interstellar civilization is difficult.

These distance ratios don't take into account the difficulty of escaping gravity wells.  Don't know if it matters.

[gzhcqvfb] Black hole jet as Death Star superlaser

Black holes emit jets (through an as yet poorly understood mechanism) as seen in active galactic nuclei, e.g. Hercules A.  From this, it seems straightforward, even trivial, to build a Death Star: point a black hole in the right direction (moving it first if necessary) (building it first if necessary), then dump a bunch of stuff into it (assuming that's the mechanism that causes jets).

How large a black hole is needed?  Does it need to be a supermassive black hole or do stellar mass ones also produce useful jets (microquasars)?  How powerful / deadly is the jet -- how close does one need to move the black hole?  How much stuff needs to be dumped in to power the jet?  I suspect black holes are very efficient at E=mc^2.

Some galaxies might be so unlucky as to not need astroengineering.  Their SMB jets might have somehow (perhaps after merger) gotten naturally aligned with the disc of the galaxy (the black hole is "on its side", like Uranus), so as stars orbit the central black hole, its jets irradiate every star system in the disc.  Tell a story of a civilization which sees a jet approaching.

How do you move and point a (possibly supermassive) black hole?  If only stellar mass black holes are needed, then it might be easier just to find one that is already pointing the right direction.

Moving and pointing black holes seems so difficult that it's almost certainly easier just to move the target, perhaps into its sun.  (Though maybe the target has defenses against that, so a ranged weapon is desirable.)  However, sterilizing an entire galaxy as described above does seem an appropriate use case (assuming it even works: life often finds a way).

A K3 civilization might also use jets not just for warfare but also as a power source.

[bgyjrlrh] K3 villages are not very important

In a Star Wars-like universe in which planet-killing weapons are being frequently used, at first it doesn't seem so bad that the worst thing a character has done (as we explore the character's backstory) is that the character destroyed merely a village once, and accordingly, the character is set up as at most a minor villain, or maybe even the protagonist with some minor flaws.  Then, we learn that the concept of "village" in this universe means a planet with low population density like that of Earth, in contrast to "cities" which are planets that are ecumenopolises like Coruscant.  (In contrast to destroying villages, destroying a city does look bad on your permanent record.)

Then, we discover that the "village" that the character had destroyed was not just like Earth: it actually was Earth, our Earth.  This character had been mankind's greatest enemy and had won by destroying the planet and killing everyone.  But that act isn't even considered noteworthy in this universe.

[drdwhngj] If meteors were far away

It's probably not too difficult to use parallax to determine that meteors are atmospheric phenomena (actually to verify, since they had been assumed so, hence their name).  (Who first made this measurement?)

However, suppose this measurement, in an alternate universe, revealed that meteors -- the meteor streaks themselves -- were astronomical phenomena, shining from deep space far beyond the atmosphere.

We can roughly estimate the velocity of meteors (in our universe) by modeling a meteor grain as stationary in space and the Earth hitting it at Earth's orbital speed around the sun.  Assuming the visual appearance of meteors in the alternate universe is the same as in ours, I think meteors would be determined to be moving faster than the speed of light if they are more than 10000 au = 0.16 light year from the sun.  For the purposes of fiction, let's imagine alternate-universe astronomers struggling to explain the observation of no parallax even from widely separated space probes in the solar system observing the same meteor.  No parallax despite such a wide baseline implies their distance must be at least ten thousand light years.

Perhaps they are gashes in the fabric of spacetime.  But who's on the outside doing the scratching?

[yaomwkup] Just the right amount of water

It's a weird coincidence that we not only have water on earth (hypothesized to have been delivered by many comet impacts), but also not so much that the surface would be completely covered deeply.

It's hypothesized that it was in shallow tide pools, on the border between water and land, that life first evolved.  To have shallowness seems to have required fantastic luck.  Additionally, tides, if they were necessary, required a massive moon.

This possibly explains the Fermi paradox.  Someday we may explore many star systems, consistently finding no life because of either too much water or too little.

[qawcnoee] Moon target practice

The moon has much more maria on its near side, e.g., Oceanus Procellarum, than on its far side.  Explain this with a story that ancient technological creatures shot at the moon from earth with powerful devices that caused volcanism or liquified its surface.

Maybe for entertainment.

Were they merely visitors who brought their lawn chairs to earth to watch the show, then left?  Or did an ancient technological civilization evolve on earth then completely disappear?

[xkttocdn] Fish

Give a man a nuclear arsenal and he'll annihilate civilization for a day.  Teach a man how to build nuclear weapons and... something something something.

Maybe "a species" instead of "a man", definitely violating the Prime Directive.  Tell the story of a space traveler who travels from world to world teaching its inhabitants how to build nukes just to trollishly see what they do with them: they are truly a destroyer of worlds.

Perhaps our earth has been the victim of such trolling, in which case, we should search for the hidden cameras through which the aliens are watching, gleefully hoping to see us descend into mayhem and destruction.  The hidden cameras might be powerful telescopes many light years away.

Original inspiration: An attempt to be more extreme than "Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Maybe something about being warm for the rest of the half-lives of the nuclear fuel or fallout.