This is a little touchy, so let me preface this by saying that I'm opposed to junk science...i.e., anti-vaccination adherents and so forth. Especially in the realm of medicine, junk science is irritating at best, and life-threatening at worst. I could write a whole other blog on the hows, whys and wherefores of culture, vis-a-vis junk science and belief systems. I'm fully confident in the scientific method and a science-based model of the universe - how it formed, how life evolved, the whole nine yards - the current "choose-your-own-adventure" model of science and belief among my fellow Americans has me appalled. "The centre cannot hold", and all that. We need more grounded, reality-based, reasonably skeptical humans in the world.
Rather, I'm making a case for the self-fulfilling prophetic power of science fiction. The scientific community, by definition, needs to be skeptical; I'm not faulting them on that...it's just that I get so frustrated with scientists harrumphing that "It'll never happen!" every time the conversation turns to faster-than-light space travel or the like. It's as though their imaginations begin and end with current understanding of physical laws, despite the fact that they themselves are circumventing said laws on a daily basis. They've photographed photons, for cryin in the rain. They've detected gravity waves, trapped rare particles, proven quantum entanglement...but as soon as you imply that these advances could eventually be harnessed for human use, they immediately shut down.
This is understandable. Scientists don't like to speculate. Scientists need to protect their prestige, and this age of false news and increasingly sophisticated hoaxes has them on edge. In such a cautious, paranoid environment, no serious scientist is going to express interest in warp drive or teleportation. They'll put up a shield of complexities. Even if they themselves are experimenting with weird quantum voodoo, they'll vehemently deny the implications. If science were a journey of a thousand miles, they'd take seven years to make a single step...then go back and take the same step a hundred times, studying the force required, the muscle groups involved, the tread of the shoe, the angle of trajectory of the knee, until the entire operation becomes so complex that the journey seems impossible.
But science fiction - being essentially fantasy, with a scientific grounding - can make that thousand-mile journey in a couple of pages. And good sci-fi will not only present a fantastical form of travel (i.e., warp drive), but justify it with some hard facts about the universe. The more realistic the science, the more real the journey. The trade-off, of course, is that the science is simplified and watered down. I can tell you that negative energy is required to move spacetime around a warp bubble like a conveyor belt...but I'll have to fudge the details on how one makes and projects negative energy. Because we don't really know how to do it. There's a couple of theories, but the extrapolation involved puts the operation squarely in the realm of fantasy, for now.
What you end up with, essentially, is junk science - fantasy and speculation. Any serious scientist would scoff mightily at the proposed solution. In the meantime, working with "current technology", their best idea is the slow-moving "worldship" that takes 30,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri...essentially mooting the whole point of space exploration, because even if they remembered Earth, it would take too long to send back a message.
But I want to make the case that this fantasy science, when used in science fiction, isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, it's essential to scientific progress. If science in its current state had its druthers, it would crawl along with paranoid uncertainty until everything was completely proven. Caution must be balanced with vision, the Scientific Method balanced with tinkering. Perhaps a lone crackpot in his garage can't figure out a warp drive, but a private company can. Magnetic theory was completely misunderstood in the 15th century, but that didn't stop the building of sophisticated compasses. Maybe a functional warp drive will be built before we even fully understand how it works. It's happened before.
But what we need here is the inspiration for a new generation of tinkerers and scientists - something to plant the seed of vision. That's where science fiction comes in. There's the oft-cited example of Robert Heinlein, basically predicting the internet and cell phones in his stories long before they became a reality. Were his models completely correct? Hardly. You could call his models junk science, if you were nasty. But the fact is, these things became reality, in no small part because he planted the germ of the idea.
I've taken the long way around to make a point we already know: we need even half-baked and half-understood science in our stories, so long as it points toward a technology we want to happen. I'd go so far as to say that we should ignore the scientists who tell us these things aren't possible. Science fiction is not about current technology and scientific understanding; it is about a future where such things are already the norm. Faster-than-light travel is a given in most space operas. Star Trek, perhaps, comes closest to describing a realistic model, and at least tries to justify it scientifically. Is it "good science"? Mostly, no. But the fact is, if humans are to effectively travel beyond our solar system, we need FTL travel and communication. Instead of harrumphing, we need physicists who will work out models to make this sort of thing a reality.
So I'm not going to worry about (for instance) whether or not my understanding of quantum entanglement is completely solid, before describing a form of instantaneous communication across space. Instead, I'm just going to to go for it. This is one of those cases in which a little junk science is at worst harmless, and at best pressures scientists and engineers into figuring out a way to make the technology happen. I'm not trying to promote a lack of scientific understanding, but I am convinced that we need a little imagination as well.
Rick Out.
Rather, I'm making a case for the self-fulfilling prophetic power of science fiction. The scientific community, by definition, needs to be skeptical; I'm not faulting them on that...it's just that I get so frustrated with scientists harrumphing that "It'll never happen!" every time the conversation turns to faster-than-light space travel or the like. It's as though their imaginations begin and end with current understanding of physical laws, despite the fact that they themselves are circumventing said laws on a daily basis. They've photographed photons, for cryin in the rain. They've detected gravity waves, trapped rare particles, proven quantum entanglement...but as soon as you imply that these advances could eventually be harnessed for human use, they immediately shut down.
This is understandable. Scientists don't like to speculate. Scientists need to protect their prestige, and this age of false news and increasingly sophisticated hoaxes has them on edge. In such a cautious, paranoid environment, no serious scientist is going to express interest in warp drive or teleportation. They'll put up a shield of complexities. Even if they themselves are experimenting with weird quantum voodoo, they'll vehemently deny the implications. If science were a journey of a thousand miles, they'd take seven years to make a single step...then go back and take the same step a hundred times, studying the force required, the muscle groups involved, the tread of the shoe, the angle of trajectory of the knee, until the entire operation becomes so complex that the journey seems impossible.
But science fiction - being essentially fantasy, with a scientific grounding - can make that thousand-mile journey in a couple of pages. And good sci-fi will not only present a fantastical form of travel (i.e., warp drive), but justify it with some hard facts about the universe. The more realistic the science, the more real the journey. The trade-off, of course, is that the science is simplified and watered down. I can tell you that negative energy is required to move spacetime around a warp bubble like a conveyor belt...but I'll have to fudge the details on how one makes and projects negative energy. Because we don't really know how to do it. There's a couple of theories, but the extrapolation involved puts the operation squarely in the realm of fantasy, for now.
What you end up with, essentially, is junk science - fantasy and speculation. Any serious scientist would scoff mightily at the proposed solution. In the meantime, working with "current technology", their best idea is the slow-moving "worldship" that takes 30,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri...essentially mooting the whole point of space exploration, because even if they remembered Earth, it would take too long to send back a message.
But I want to make the case that this fantasy science, when used in science fiction, isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, it's essential to scientific progress. If science in its current state had its druthers, it would crawl along with paranoid uncertainty until everything was completely proven. Caution must be balanced with vision, the Scientific Method balanced with tinkering. Perhaps a lone crackpot in his garage can't figure out a warp drive, but a private company can. Magnetic theory was completely misunderstood in the 15th century, but that didn't stop the building of sophisticated compasses. Maybe a functional warp drive will be built before we even fully understand how it works. It's happened before.
But what we need here is the inspiration for a new generation of tinkerers and scientists - something to plant the seed of vision. That's where science fiction comes in. There's the oft-cited example of Robert Heinlein, basically predicting the internet and cell phones in his stories long before they became a reality. Were his models completely correct? Hardly. You could call his models junk science, if you were nasty. But the fact is, these things became reality, in no small part because he planted the germ of the idea.
I've taken the long way around to make a point we already know: we need even half-baked and half-understood science in our stories, so long as it points toward a technology we want to happen. I'd go so far as to say that we should ignore the scientists who tell us these things aren't possible. Science fiction is not about current technology and scientific understanding; it is about a future where such things are already the norm. Faster-than-light travel is a given in most space operas. Star Trek, perhaps, comes closest to describing a realistic model, and at least tries to justify it scientifically. Is it "good science"? Mostly, no. But the fact is, if humans are to effectively travel beyond our solar system, we need FTL travel and communication. Instead of harrumphing, we need physicists who will work out models to make this sort of thing a reality.
So I'm not going to worry about (for instance) whether or not my understanding of quantum entanglement is completely solid, before describing a form of instantaneous communication across space. Instead, I'm just going to to go for it. This is one of those cases in which a little junk science is at worst harmless, and at best pressures scientists and engineers into figuring out a way to make the technology happen. I'm not trying to promote a lack of scientific understanding, but I am convinced that we need a little imagination as well.
Rick Out.
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