The Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator

Problem-Solution Analysis of Superluminal Communication: The Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator

Matthew Beattie HU - 338: Traversing the Borders, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL

September 22, 2014

Abstract Science fiction often encounters scientific problems from the real world. Since science fiction writers are free to deal with these problems outside of the boundaries of real science, they often do. For instance, in the novel Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card creates several devices that solve problems the characters face that to go around the scientific limits of humanity. One of these, the Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, is a device that while currently unfeasible, may be possible with major scientific advancements using real world science.

1 Introduction

In Orson Scott Card’s novel, Ender’s Game, the characters must overcome the difficulty of communicating with one another over vast expanses of space. The novel is set in a futuristic world where the human race is at war with an alien civilization called the Formic race, or the buggers. There have been two invasions by these insect-like creatures that have wreaked havoc on society. The International Fleet, one of the last reputable government forces in the world, is leading a third invasion to defeat the buggers for good. This time, instead of waiting for the buggers to attack the Earth, the I.F. is taking the fight to the buggers. Their home planet is across the galaxy from our solar system, which means the spaceships will have to communicate over vast expanses of space. Card invents new physics to solve his problem, which is a common and necessary practice of science fiction writers. It’s part of what makes science fiction fiction. The problem that Card solves with his new science, called Philotic Physics, is in fact also a limitation of the real universe. We can not travel or communicate instantaneously, let alone faster than the speed of light. The closest we have come is at the speed of light through lasers and radio waves. This paper will investigate the problem that light-speed communication imposes on space exploration both in science fiction and science fact. Several other science fiction authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, have used these devices to solve problems in their own fictional universes. There are several potential real world solutions to this problem, including particles currently being studied using the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and some ideas that some really smart physicists have about the way the universe might work. Before we get to all of that, let’s start by looking at the Ansible.

2 History of the Ansible

The Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator was one of the crucial elements that aided the Interna- tional Fleet in the Third Invasion. The device was reverse engineered from a Formic device that served to distinguish the philotic signals from different Formic queens to her workers. This was discovered by the I.F.

1 after the second invasion, when Mazer Rackam defeated the buggers by destroying the Queen’s ship. At the instant that Rackam executed his attack, the entire Formic invasion fleet went silent. It was this instantaneous shut down that caused the I.F. to believe that the buggers could communicate over vast expanses of space instantaneously. During the aftermath of the Second Invasion, the enemy ships were searched and studied, and the Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator was built. [1] Card’s book never explicitly states how this communicator is built. There is mention of philotic physics that are involved. The buggers proved that superluminal communication was in fact possible. However, it is unclear whether the device is reverse engineered from a device found on the Formic ships, or developed by I.F. scientists with no outside influence from the buggers. What is clear, however, is that Orson Scott Card was not the first person to invent this device. The Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, also known as the ansible, can be traced back to the year 1966, and the author Ursula K. Le Guin.[2] The first book in the Hainish Trilogy, Rocannon’s World, is where a similar superluminal communication device is found. This device is one that can communicate instantaneously over vast expanses of space. [3] In Le Guin’s book, The Left Hand of Darkness, the device is described as one that, “doesn’t involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity ... One point has to be fixed, on a planet of certain mass, but the other end is portable.”. [4] Her devices are slightly different from the ones used by Card in that Le Guin’s communicators transmit text messages, not audio. Despite the differences between the device invented by Le Guin, and the one used by Card, there are two main similarities. The first is the basic function of the device. It is a superluminal communicator, invented to solve the problem of communication limited by the speed of light in worlds where communication is required across solar systems, or even galaxies. The second is the device’s name. The word ‘ansible’ is actually Le Guin’s creation. Her device was so popular in science fiction that it was used by many authors, not so much out of lack of creativity, but rather as homage to one of science fiction’s greatest authors. A quick search of the nets will leave you with two possibilities for her inspiration. Either, it is meant to sound like the word ‘answerable’, or, it is an anagram of the word ‘lesbian’. Any further details could not be found, but several sources pointed to these two possibilities. Card’s work is the most notable use of an ansible outside of Le Guin’s. In fact, in Ender’s Game, he alludes to the fact that he is only borrowing the Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator’s nick name. “ ‘The official name is the Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on.’”. [1] This excerpt from Card’s book is in fact, a bit of non-fiction, if the somebody is Orson Scott Card, and the old book is Le Guin’s Rocannon’s World. Instantaneous communicators have been a part of science fiction for many years. They have been used by many writers to overcome the time lag when writing scenarios that involve intergalactic (or interplanetary, or interstellar, or inter-just-about-any-other-astronomical-body-you-can-think-of) communication. There is only one real problem with the solution whose name was invented by Le Guin, and whose physics were refined by Card. It can’t possibly exist.

3 The Limiting Nature of Communication

Since the beginning of recorded history, the development of the human race has been limited by methods of communication. It is a fundamental idea in anthropology that knowledge, like genetics, must be successfully passed down from parent to child for a race to succeed. This has to be done through whatever means of communication is available. There are several distinct revolutions in communication, starting from the very ﬁrst communications among humans. As written in Terance Moran’s book, Introduction to the History of Communication, these are the following. [5] 1. Basic Human Communication - The ability to speak and communicate by drawing visual symbolic representations of the real world

2 2. Literacy - Writing and reading complex languages, which facilitated much of the learning that set the foundations for the human race 3. Typography - Printing many copies of a text, efficiently, and abundantly 4. Advanced Graphics - Photography and cinematography that revolutionized communication through images 5. Electricity - Advances in technology that gave way to the mass media of the 20th century 6. Cybernetics - The ability to communicate digitally due to advances in digital technology Moran’s list is mostly complete. At the time of his publication, in the 21st century, it is complete. How- ever, with the advances in space technologies that are found in Ender’s Game, there is another revolution in communication that is necessary: communication across outer space. As a race, humans have come a long way in communicating to each other on Earth. We have gone from drawings on cave walls and stories told around a fire, to mobile phones which can be used to talk to other people anywhere in the world. Languages have developed from very simplistic grunts to intricate dialects, like English, which is so complex, it goes beyond the understanding of its average native speaker. Despite these advances, communication is still one of humanity’s limiting factors. It is still necessary to speak or write things down to communicate between two individuals. Humans do not have the ability to think to each other. Each method of communication outlined above places limitations on the human race. Most of these limitations are specific to each method. For instance, the basic human communication category was limited by the lack of adequate language to develop ideas and philosophies. The cybernetics category is limited by the capabilities of digital devices, and how efficiently humans can use them. [5] There is one limiting factor that spans all of these categories, and that is time. A message takes time to be delivered from one individual to another. That time may be simply the time it takes one person to say what he or she is thinking, or it can be the time it takes a text or audio message to be transmitted from one location to another. This is a limiting factor when two human beings are attempting communication on the same planet. The limitation only magnifies when taken onto a galactic stage.

4 Communication in Space

The planet Earth is, relatively speaking, inﬁnitesimally small. While it might not be small next to a human, compared to the known universe it is actually very tiny. It is even small in terms of the solar system where it resides. It is closest in size to the planet Venus, and larger than the neighboring planet Mars. It is roughly 10 times smaller than Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, and 100 times smaller than the sun it orbits, which isn’t even a large star. [6] If the difference in size of the planets isn’t enough to drive the point home, consider the scale of the solar system. The Earth is about 93 million miles from its sun. This distance is also known as 1 AU, or astronomical unit. The distance between the Earth and other planets is more difﬁcult to portray as a nice number because the Earth is revolving around the sun at the same time as the other planets, but not at the same speed. This means that the distance between Earth and the other planets is constantly changing. For instance, the Earth is between 33 million miles and 249 million miles away from Mars. On average, that works out to around 139 million miles. During the Apollo program in the 1960s, there were humans in a spacecraft traveling as far as 238,900 miles away from the Earth. While this distance is only a fraction of the distance between the Earth and Mars, it still presented a time delay for communications between the spacecraft and the ground control station. The Apollo spacecraft used radio waves to carry transmissions back to earth. Radio waves travel at the speed of light (in a vacuum). Even at this speed, there was about a two and half second communication delay between the earth and the capsule. This delay is very manageable, however, when the distances increase, so does the

3 delay. For instance, taking the 139 million miles that is the average distance to Mars, and the 671 million mile an hour speed of light, it would take about 13 minutes for a signal to go from one planet to another, meaning someone on Earth would have to wait 26 minutes for a response from Mars. This time delay can get pretty drastic when the most distant man-made objects in the universe are considered. These, of course, are the Voyager spacecraft. In 2008, when Voyager 2 was 87 AU (more than 8 billion miles) away from the sun, it took 11 hours and 58 minutes for a signal to travel between Voyager and the Earth. Voyager 1, which was 107 AU away from the sun (almost 1 trillion miles) took 14 hours and 52 minutes to send a signal back home. [7] To put this in an even larger perspective, the Voyager spacecraft are about half a light day away from Earth. The nearest star system is Alpha Centauri at 4.4 lightyears, followed by Bernard’s Star at 6.0 lightyears. WISE J104915.57-531906 was discovered in 2013 and is the third closest, at 6.5 lightyears. [8] One lightyear is the distance that light travels in a year. This means that with the communication technology we have now, a spacecraft at Alpha Centauri would have to wait more than 8 years for a response from a communication to earth. This is extremely problematic. The National Aeronautics and Space Administra- tion (NASA) has conducted studies related to this time delay as it will relate to future missions further out into the solar system. One program to test the effects of this communication time delay, as well as procedures for future manned missions to extra- terrestrial bodies, is NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO). NEEMO has conducted several missions where time delays were im- plemented as part of the mission parameters to see how it would affect the crew’s safety and mission success. One of these missions, NEEMO 16, in- cluded simulated emergency scenarios with both 5 and 10 minute communication delays. It was found that during the simulated emergencies, communica- Figure 1: NEEMO’s Aquarius Underwater Habitat [9] tions between the crew and ground control broke down rapidly. [9] If communications break down during emergencies with a 5 minute time delay, one of the barriers that stands between the present day and interstellar travel is superluminal communication. Additional programs to study communication delays are the Desert Research and Technology Studies program, the Exploration Analogs and Mission Development program, and the International Space Station Test- bed for Analog Research. [9] While these programs show that time delay can be problematic for deep space exploration, they do not offer suggestions as to how to be able to communicate faster than we can now.

5 Faster-Than-Light Communication

So far, the fastest speed that humans can physically conceive travel at, is the speed of light. While there are plenty of theories regarding faster than light travel, these theories are, well, only theories. 671 million miles an hour is the fastest humans can currently make something go, and that something is limited exclusively to electrons. The basic physical problem was discovered theoretically be Einstein. In reality, humans are limited to the speed of light because of the way we have come to understand the universe we live in.

5.1 The Standard Model

The model of the universe that is widely accepted among scientists is known as the Standard Model. This model is the result of the work of many physicists, and was formed as an accepted model of the universe in

4 the late 1970s. The Standard Model explains much of the known universe through particles. (Technically, the full name of the model is the Standard Model of particle physics.) These particles are known as quarks and leptons. Each type of particle has 3 pairs, or generations, that make up the group. For instance, there are up and down quarks, charm and strange quarks, and top and bottom quarks. The lepton generations are the electron and electron neutrino, the muon and the muon neutrino, and the tau and the tau neutrino. [10] The Standard Model also supplies the contemplating human with four fundamental forces that drive the universe. These are the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. Gravity, is the most commonly known of the four, and is also the weakest by a significant margin. These forces are the result of particle exchanges. The particles are called bosons. The forces all have a corresponding boson. (Almost.) The strong force has the gluon, the electromagnetic force has the photon, and the weak force has the W and Z bosons. Gravity has a hypothetical boson dubbed the graviton, although this boson has not been found. [10] The Standard Model does have holes in it. It does not explain dark matter, or the unequal amount of matter and antimatter in the universe. [11] Finally, the Standard Model’s existence relies on the Higgs Boson. All of the remaining particles in the Standard Model have been found, except the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is a theoretical boson which correlates to the Higgs field, which is predicted by the Standard Model to be one of the fundamental fields of the Universe. The essence of the Higgs field, in simple terms, is a field that all particles move through that was created just after the big bang. It is theorized that a particles motion through this field is how that particle has mass. The larger the interaction between a particle and the Higgs field, the greater that particle’s mass is. [12] The Standard Model does facilitate a hypothesis that explains the other holes, such as dark matter, antimatter, and many of the problems that physicists are trying to solve today. This hypothesis is called supersymmetry. Supersymmetry asserts that the Standard Model is part of a larger model, which has holes to explain the different unknowns of the Standard Model.

Figure 2: Diagram visualizing supersymmetry, as explained in Particle Fever. The circular section in the center is the Standard Model as we know it. [13]

It is in the Higgs Boson, where the key to superluminal communication may lie in the Standard Model. The Higgs Boson, potentially having to do with the mass of, well, everything, might be used to manipulate that mass so that an object governed by the Standard Model might be able to travel faster than light. This is only a theory, and even if it were remotely correct, it would be several decades, and several steps forward in physics, before humans could begin to design superluminal devices. A relatively current event regarding the Standard Model came from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, when they produced data documenting the discovery of a particle that may or may not be

5 the Higgs Boson. Like most big scientiﬁc discoveries, this one is also ﬁlled with convolution. The hypotheses by the physicists revolved around the boson being at one of two energy levels. The particle CERN discovered, was smack dab in the middle of these two energy levels. So, as far as realistically achieving superluminal anything, we are still lightyears away. [14]

5.2 String Theory

String theory is, in a nutshell, incredibly confusing, potentially detrimental to our laws of physics, and so far purely theoretical. Honestly, I tried to make some sense of it after reading several articles, and but all I ended up with was a headache. However, since the purpose of this paper is to analyze the reality of superluminal communication, I’m going to discuss it here. Theoretically, faster than light travel is possible according to string theory. So string theory, as its name would imply, is based on strings. Not the strings that make up the sweater you are wearing, but very tiny strings of mesons that are the result of quarks that have just collided. These strings are rubber band like, and bound quarks into hadrons, which make up particles which make up atoms which make up matter. [15] Essentially, these strings, which can be open ended or in the form of a loop, vibrate at different frequencies. Depending on the different frequencies, the strings make up all the particles that make up matter as we know it. [16] Originally there were 5 strings, and this was a problem. String theory predicts that there is one unifying string which essentially holds matter together. Luckily, these 5 strings were connected by a thing called M-theory, which predicts that the universe is actually 11-dimensional, with 8 dimensions unknown to us. [15] This leads to the theoretical possibility that our universe is just one pocket of a multiverse, which scares some classical physicists because the answers to all the questions may be trapped in another universe in a multiverse with an infinite number of universes. The needle in a haystack guy had no idea how good he had it. All this is really heady and somewhat mind boggling, so let’s move on to wormholes. The idea with string theory is, more or less, the manipulation of space and time through the strings that make up the universe. Or multiverse, as it may be. Physics outlines the velocity of an object with this simple formula. d V = (1) t V is the object velocity (speed in a specific direction), d is the distance to be traveled, and t is the time it takes to travel that distance. There are two ways to move between two points at a faster rate. One is to increase the speed of the object to be moved. The other, is to shorten the distance between the two points. String theory does this through things called ‘wormholes’ which are little shortcuts between two points through space. The main problem with string theory is that it is entirely theoretical. [16] None of the things string theory claims have been physically proven. The argument could be made that publications on string theory are works of science fiction themselves. Ideas do have to come before proof. However, string theory as a viable option for superluminal communication is still purely theoretical, and will most likely never happen in out grandchildren’s lifetimes.

5.3 Tachyons

Tachyons have caused what are possibly the greatest contradictory statements by two science ﬁction legends, of all time. Before we get to that, a little more about tachyons and why they would be in a paper about superluminal communication. Tachyons are particles that, in their normal state, move faster than the speed of light. In fact, these particles require more energy to slow them down. [17] Their name derives from the greek ‘tacis’, meaning swift. [18] Initially, it was believed that the existence of a faster than light particle was impossible due to Einsteins famous theory of relativity. Thankfully, Einstein invented the special theory of relativity, which states that

6 something traveling at the speed of light, c, is always observed at c no matter what relative velocity the observer may have. This may seem like bad news, but scientists have thought of a loop hole. Einstein states that an object can’t accelerate to a speed faster than the speed of light, and that an object going the speed of light (photon particles, electrons, etc.) are only observed at the speed of light. So, in theory, a particle that was created above the speed of light would be trapped in the c < V range. This is exactly the theory behind the tachyon. [17] An understanding of these particles would potentially unlock the door to technologies that could create these particles and capitalize on their properties. If we could harness this power, then we could manipulate the particles that travel faster than light, and potentially use these particles to communicate. If this could be achieved, the upper limit of speed of this communication is unknown. [19] Again, there is a problem with this potential solution. Its existence has yet to be proven by physicists. Our understanding of science allows for it’s existence, but scientists have yet to be able to physically prove it. Tachyons, while potentially a solution to the problem here, and arguable one of the most probable solutions, is still just a theory. When it was ﬁrst proposed that tachyons could be the answer to faster than light travel, the idea was imme- diately accepted and embraced by some, but not all, of the science ﬁction community. One of its opponents, Isaac Asimov, wrote an article for Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, called “Impossible, that’s all” in reference to the new particles. Just a year later, Arthur C. Clark, ever optimistic, wrote an article for the same magazine on the same subject entitled, “Possible, that’s all”. [18]

5.4 Card’s Philotic Physics

In the Ender’s Game universe, the buggers achieve instantaneous communication by using philotic physics. It should be made clear at this point that philotic physics and philotes are completely fictional, invented by Card to skirt around the limits of real science for the purposes of science fiction. After all, science fiction is fiction. It does not have to be plausible. Philotes are little tiny particles that make up everything and are connected in a sort of web. The Formics can communicate to the Queen on this web, instantaneously. They also use this web to communicate with Ender and then build the fantasy game on their planet. While philotes are science fiction and strings are (kind of) real science, the similarities between string theory and philotic physics should be noted. Both revolve around sub-particle things that make up matter and the universe. These things are also the crux of humans ability to communicate (and/or travel) faster than light. Also, both of are completely imaginary. While this may seem like strong evidence for string theory making Ender’s Game possible, I assure you, it is not. There is one incredible difference between the two that should never be forgotten. Orson Scott Card invented philotic physics as a part of a work of fiction, and that is all. He never asserted the universe might actually work that way.

6 Conclusion

The problem that Orson Scott Card needs to solve is a limit in the real universe we live in. It is a problem that the space agencies of the world will need to solve before the human race ventures out into the galaxy. Granted, we will also need to solve the problem of travel at light-speed or faster than light-speed before superluminal communication comes into play, however, the two problems are similar in nature. The physics that solve this problem in Ender’s universe are completely ﬁctional and do not exist in the real world. All of the theoretical ways to communicate and travel faster than light that are being studied by physicists have one thing in common. It will be a very long time before we come close to actually achieving this goal. Is faster than light travel impossible? Well, no. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his 1972 essay “Hazards of Prophecy”, “the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” [20] It is very difﬁcult to say something is impossible and truly be correct. Most impossible things are separated from us by our current grasp of the known universe. (Which begs the question, what’s in the

7 unknown universe?) The more accurate version of the statement made earlier in this paper is: superluminal communication can’t possibly exist, yet, with a very big, very distant yet. Faster than light travel, if it is possible, will require a much deeper understanding of the universe than the human race can fathom at this point in time. However, there is one thing that Orson Scott Card did get right. Science moves forward in steps, and the big leaps forward are just a multitude of little steps. In Ender’s Game, the battle rooms at battle school are zero gravity environments, while the rest of the space station has gravity. The artificial gravity for the rest of the station is seemingly created by the station’s rotation. However, the instructors have a device called ‘the hook’, which allows them to move around the zero G environment at will, without pushing off of the walls or any structure. This implies that the people in the story have somehow figured out a way to manipulate gravity. Orson Scott Card is right in the regard that if we have the ability to communicate faster than light, and travel at very near light speed, we will also probably have an understanding of gravity to the point where we can manipulate it. Superluminal communication is on a level that requires such a higher understanding of physics than we have right now, that there are going to be many very significant steps along the way.

7 Areas for Further Research

This novel created so many potential research topics that one of the most difficult parts was choosing a topic. The other most difficult part was trying to understand string theory well enough to write about it without sounding like a blithering idiot. Since the prompt limited us to one topic for research, I will briefly mention here the other ideas that I was considering prior to choosing faster-than-light communication. This does not come close to fully outlining all the research topics for Ender’s Game, but it is the list of the ones I would be interested in finding out. The first is the swarm cognition of the Formic race. We have insect swarms in real life, and we’ve studied them. Some initial research into this topic outlined similarities between the Formic’s invasions and a swarm of bees searching for a new hive location. Another topic could be having to do with developmental psychology of incredibly smart children. How is it different than children of average intelligence? Is above average intelligence (given intelligence, not learned material) necessary to produce a high quality military leader? How does constant control and manipulation affect a child’s psyche? These are questions I hope other people also thought of and answered. Good science fiction is thought provoking. This novel absolutely accomplished that.

References

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