• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

2 December 2012 for display on eFanzines at: www.efanzines.com Feedback encouraged Please e-mail your letter of comment to: [email protected] Editorial At the back of IRS September 2012 is a report on an important Australian breakthrough in quantum computing. This time, authored by the editor and scientist Dick (Ditmar) Jenssen who does cover graphics for this excellent journal, we put right up front the literary and mathematical dimensions of Special Relativity. Find out what are the best SF stories on relativistic travel and revel in the elegant math. It starts on Page 8. Contents This issue’s cover ................................................................................................................................................................. 3 CSIRAC and Science Fiction ............................................................................................................................................... 5 Relativistic travel .................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Letters from (North) America ............................................................................................................................................. 15 Norma K Hemming Award 2013 ....................................................................................................................................... 16 Andrew Porter encourages last minute fanac on the 2013 GUFF race ............................................................................... 17 Conventions on the horizon ................................................................................................................................................ 18 Book review – ‘Astonishing! Astounding! – two novels by Malcolm Jameson ................................................................ 25 Vale Sir Bernard Lovell – a true pioneer of the Space Age ............................................................................................... 26 Stefan zone ......................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Odd spot ............................................................................................................................................................................. 30 Why Christmas Beetles appear at Christmas time .............................................................................................................. 31 Art, etc. credits… Cover: Graphic by Ditmar Page 2 Photos of Bill Wright and Dick Jenssen Page 3 Graphic by Ditmar Page 4 Illustration by Ian Gunn Page 9 Book cover: Time for the Stars (R A Heinein) Pages 18-24 Convention logos Page 25 Book covers: Surinam Turtles Page 30 Comics and Pulps covers 3 This issue’s cover Through Time and Space with Project Frangible? Cover graphic and notes by Dick Jenssen The recent highly probable discovery of the Higgs boson (Notes 1, 2) has overshadowed the many accomplishments of the Frangible team (Note 3) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). To recapitulate: the mishap, essentially a small explosion, at the LHC on September 19th, 2008, had the serendipitous consequence of ‘opening’ a minute portal into another universe, or a neighbouring brane world. The Project Frangible Team was set up to investigate the phenomenon, and discovered that what are glimpsed through the portal are transitory scenes which apparently vary randomly in space and time. However, as reported in the previous issue of Interstellar Ramjet Scoop (Note 4), the scientists in the team have managed to stabilise the view to a particular point in space-time. This is of a scientific station on an overhanging cliff, or simply floating, with, on the underneath of the projection, some curious ‘plumbing’. The team has managed to manipulate the position of the portal to obtain a closer view of the plumbing, and in doing so, has seen that is apparently being serviced by a technician – as shown in the cover photograph of this issue of Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. The view fluctuates in that, from moment to moment, a glow, akin to St. Elmo’s fire, surrounds the plumbing. See the image on the right. A detailed study of the view, in conjunction with the stochastic spatial and temporal shifting, has lead one member of Project Frangible to theorise that the plumbing is in fact a device which manipulates, or has some control over, both time and space. Because he is a keen reader of Science Fiction (Note 5), he has called the architectural device a chronosynclastic infundibulum (Note 6). Currently, the Frangible Team is investigating ways in which the alien technology can be investigated and understood, and possibly transmitted to our Universe. If, String Theory is valid, it may be that the physics of the brane-world is not compatible with ours. But that is a matter still to be settled. Notes 1 “highly probable” is correct, inasmuch as while the particle which has been discovered possesses many of the expected properties of the Higgs boson, it has not yet been unequivocally confirmed as the Higgs. See Note 2 below. 2 Already there have been a number of books explaining the importance of the Higgs boson, which point out that the existence of the boson is important inasmuch as it proves the existence of the Higgs field – a field which permeates all space and which is responsible for endowing mass on particles. Without the field, all particles would be massless, and move at the speed of light. And, of course, we would not exist. Of the books already published, I would recommend: Higgs by Jim Baggott, and The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll. Of the two, both highly readable, I prefer the Carroll book because it gives more detail on the reasons as to why the discovered particle still needs incontrovertible evidence as to it’s actually being the Higgs, and why any anomalies would be welcomed (a metaphorical door into new theories and experimentation). 4 Although written before the LHC discovery, I would also recommend: The Infinity Puzzle by Frank Close. It deals with more than the Higgs, and even though its emphasis is on removing naughty infinities from Quantum theory contains more detail on the Higgs. However it is a ‘tougher’ read… 3 See the latest issues of IRS at: http://efanzines.com/IRS/index.htm 4 http://efanzines.com/IRS/IRS-2012-09.pdf 5 Personal note At school, because I read SF, and didn’t disguise the fact, I was a “wet weed’, a “drongo”, and quite “pathetic”. On meeting adult readers through the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, I realised that if I, and they, were such weeds, we had something that the “flowers” and “grasses” did not – namely imagination and open minds. During my B.Sc (majoring in Physics), I still was an avid reader, but my predilection was tolerated by my contemporaries. However, my M.Sc (1957-8), involved using Australia’s home-grown (that’s designed, built and maintained) digital computer CSIRAC – which, as I understand, was the world’s third electronic, digital computer to have both data and program internally stored. Now one day I turned up at the Computing Lab to debug my programs (yes, CSIRAC was a hands-on computer, one user at a time) with a just-read paperback SF novel in my hand. It was a duplicate copy, so I had no reason to keep it. Accordingly, I asked the chief computer wizard at the Lab if he would like to have it. Surprisingly, he said “yes”, took the book, went to a cupboard behind the computer desk, and opened it. That was one of the key moments in my life, a road to Damascus conversion – for the cupboard was packed to near overflowing with SF magazines and paperbacks. That epiphany made me realise that real scientists, people who had created a truly amazing device (the computer) read, and treasured science fiction. Since then, more and more physicists, chemists, mathematicians and others have written books in which SF references abound. Indeed, many famous scientists – Nobel prize winners among them – have penned popular explanatory works in which SF stories, and shows, are highlighted. If, for example, one looks closely at some of the graphics in Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps, you will see small drawings of the Starship Enterprise lurking in the background. Wet weeds we may have been, and may still be, but if it weren’t for those bright growths, the computer on which I write this would never have existed. 6 A reference, of course, to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan, where a ‘chronosynclastic infundibulum’ is a ‘chrono [time] – synclastic [having the same kind of curvature in all directions] infundibulum [a funnel or funnel-shaped cavity]. As Vonnegut writes: “…said Rumford…’When I ran my space-ship into the chrono- synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that has ever been always will be, and that everything that ever will be always has been’ ” The quote is from page 325 of the Library of America’s edition of Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1950-1962, which comprises Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night and Stories. There are six stories, all SF, including one of my all-time favourites: Harrison Bergeron. Technical notes The cover graphic was created in e-on’s Vue Complete 11. The plumbing was created in Braid Art Labs Groboto 3.2.1. This latter software is an upgrade to a previous version used for covers of IRS. Final tweaks and text were done

Load more

  31

Copy Link