Cometary Tales Blog,Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy Marichka Explains Etheric Engineering

Marichka Explains Etheric Engineering

Explain etherics? Hah!

Nobody can explain etheric engineering. Or the stuff that makes it work: aether.

The best anyone can do is describe aether. To our faulty three-plus-temporal-dimension senses, aether is nothing but a dark brownish fluid. It seems to bubble, giving off flashes well into the UV end of the spectrum.

That’s why one’s advised to wear goggles (or install UV-protective mods if you’re likely to encounter the stuff regularly). Relatively cheap, those. Even I have ’em, and you know what my finances are like! If you get the stuff on you (I strongly advise against it!), it tends to adhere.

так.

Is sticky. You don’t want it stuck to you, trust me.

If aether gets loose, you want to corral it fast. Every compartment at risk of an aether spill (that is, any compartment etheric conduit passes through) should be equipped with an aether net. When deployed, it becomes a fine, gauzy web that attracts aether. Not to worry, it’ll draw off whatever’s stuck to you as well as gather up the globules floating in your face. So, no, it’s not a “net” so much as an “attractor.” I’d be happy to argue semantics with you any day.

Don’t get in my face about why it’s pronounced ay-ther in Standard. Open your chem reference, search for (C2H5)2O, and shut up already.

A swril of orange with a black ball at the core, and a bright blue jet

Aether’s the stuff that wormholes tunnel through. So no surprise that aether’s about as safe to play with as your average gravitational singularity. Aether is all places at once. That is, it knows only one where and one when.

The aether in the conduits of my ship is the aether flowing in yours. That’s why our comms people can talk to each other in real time. That’s why skipships don’t get lost, navigating the galactic byways, why the big ships that barge through gate-boosted wormholes don’t crush us as they pass. We’re all floating in the same ocean of aether.

There are…entities…out there who can perceive and manipulate aether directly. Some of them invented devices that make use of it. We lesser beings—humans, our allies, our enemies, our uncanny neighbors—have taken it on ourselves to copy those devices. Nobody knows what happens when you make a mistake copying Ancient etheric devices.

Nobody knows, because nobody comes back from those experiments. I like to think they’re gently transported to a parallel universe, given a kindly lecture on interfering with things they know not of, and sent off to some alt-universe pastoral countryside to learn…I dunno, painting, country dance, noveling, harmless little hobbies.

It’s nicer to imagine that than the alternative. Aether is dangerous stuff. A seemingly innocuous ball of cute fizzy brown goo can happily float straight through your ship’s hull. Try breathing vacuum sometime. Not fun. Not fun at all, no matter how well trained your crew is or how good your mods are.

And that’s just for starters.

So take it from me: don’t mess with aether without proper training. Even then, keep all the tools you might need right handy. You never know when you might need them.

Image Credits:

  1. Detail from cover of “Coke Machine,” by Niki Lenhart.
  2. Artist’s depiction of a black hole at the center of a galaxy. NASA/JPL-Caltech. (Modified for effect)

In certain portions of this timeline, Marichka Zelenskyy (no relation) may be found fixing things at the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy. In other portions of the timeline, she is busy elsewhere.

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Thursday at BayCon 2013Thursday at BayCon 2013

 

There’s a theory about attending a science fiction convention.  It starts with studying the program, noting who the guests are, and planning out a strategy to participate every day and not get too worn out.

Then there’s the practice of being immersed in a con.

There is some similarity.  One can see the relationship between theory and practice.  But they are by no means the same.

What is important to remember is that this is just fine.

Take, for example, BayCon 2013, the San Francisco Bay Area annual convention.  This year is dubbed Triskaidekaphobicon.  Largely because this event houses the highest concentration of people who already know what that means.

For an eager preregistered participant, the event began the day before, on Thursday night.  Last Thursday night, to be precise.  So, for starters, consider plan and execution for this simple task.

Time Frame What the Plan was What really happened
Thursday night Go to Hyatt on the way home from softball, at around 8:30,  and pick up badge A phone call delayed departure for my weekly session of cheering for the NASA Ames softball teams.  By the time Great America Parkway was my next freeway interchange, it was just about 6 o’clock.  So took a detour & stopped off at the Hyatt, which is sort of on the way to softball.  Was the TENTH person to pick up my badge.  Cool.  They planned to put the first thirteen in the newsletter, and asked if that would be OK.  “Of course,” I said.  Double-cool.  Asked if they needed “gofers” still, but the pick-up team didn’t know & couldn’t locate the Head Gofer person.  (Hint about future:  never did get signed up, and that was all for the best for Baycon and for the family Wray.)

 

BayCon participants embellished the welcome sign profusely.

BayCon participants embellished the welcome sign profusely.

On Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow ProjectOn Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow Project

Now that you have all of your supplies ready, it’s time to guide your group through the construction of a model atom.

Start by handing out the marshmallows and ice-cream topping pieces.  With younger participants, it can maintain focus if you mention that there are extra supplies for snacking on afterwards.

Start with the marshmallow.  Most of an atom is empty space.  And most of a marshmallow is nothing but air frothed into sugar.  So this marshmallow represents the “empty” space of an atom.  For older participants, you can encourage them to think of the sugar of the marshmallow as representing not only the energy that permeates what we call “empty” space but also the forces that hold the atom together.

For a very long time, the atom was believed to be more-or-less of uniform density, an amorphous mixture of tiny negative particles called electrons swirling around in a positively-charged “pudding.”  In 1911, Ernst Rutherford and his team completed a series of experiments that shocked the physics community by revealing that most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in a tiny, central nucleus containing all of the positive charge.  For our model, in honor of Rutherford, we’ll build a helium (He) atom, which has a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons.  (Much of Rutherford’s research focused on the alpha particle–which happens to be exactly the same as a helium nucleus.)

Let your dark-colored candies be protons and your light-colored candies be neutrons.  (It doesn’t really matter, but textbooks often draw protons as dark dots and neutrons as white dots.)

Using the wooden skewer or toothpick, drill a small hole in the side of the marshmallow. Now use the same toothpick or skewer to push those nucleons (a word which here means “candy pieces representing protons and neutrons”) into the center of the marshmallow.

This is a good time in the activity to stop lecturing and instead gather suggestions from the participants and sketch their ideas on a board if you have one, or to gather around some sketching paper for discussion purposes.  You can expect to see pictures that look much like a planetary system, because that’s the way the atom often (still!) is drawn in textbooks.  You might have a knowledgeable participant who’ll shout out something like, “Shells!  The electrons are in shells!” or “They’re in the Cloud!”  Regardless, during the discussion, build on these volunteered suggestions to reach a description of the electrons as whirling around the nucleus in a cloud, going so fast that you can’t really tell exactly where they are, only that you know roughly how far they are from the nucleus.

At this point, we have a positively charged ion, because we haven’t added any electrons yet.  A helium atom needs two electrons, negatively-charged particles, to balance out the two positively-charged protons.  Once it was established that the positive charge is concentrated in the nucleus, where did researchers decide that the electrons belong?

Our helium atom’s two electrons do indeed share an electron “shell”, a layer of electrons a known distance from the nucleus.  So let’s put a very thin, energetic, sparkly shell around our atom.

Before setting up the shell supplies, pause to demonstrate the procedure.  If you’re working with younger students, you may need to stress that everyone will get their turn.  If the “mess” part of the activity is an issue, set up a protected area where the messy activity is OK and let the participants queue up to build their atoms in assembly-line fashion.

To create the “electron shell” skewer the marshmallow firmly on the wooden stick, then very briefly dunk it into the water, then tap off any excess water into the water container. Tapping off excess water is important, because otherwise the marshmallow can get soggy, which makes for a less-attractive candy atom.

Marshmallow on skewer dunked into clear plastic cup half-full of water.
Dunk
Wet marshmallow held by skewer on edge of plastic cup of water, drops of water dripping off.
and un-dunk.

Each group needs a container with about a cup of water in it and another container with a packet of dry gelatin mix emptied into it.  (For fun, choose a gelatin color in keeping with whatever events are ongoing, or a local sports team’s colors…anything to drive interest.)

Finally, gently swirl the damp marshmallow in the gelatin mix.

Set the decorated marshmallows aside on a sheet of waxed paper or a plate.

As time permits, participants can make other atoms…stuffing different numbers of protons or neutrons into marshmallows and adding a shell of electrons.

Chasing CometsChasing Comets

As a  re-entry activity, let’s fall right into the project which inspired the overarching theme for this so-called blog:  cometary tails.   That is, in this instance, we’ll be “studying” the behavior of the tails of actual comets falling along their orbits about a star.    But of course, this is a “Messy Monday” project, so it  involves running, arguing, and playing with scissors (not all at the same time).

So far, the only star whose comets we’ve observed have been those of our own Sun, but as our star is not particularly unusual, it’s likely that comets ply their trade throughout the cosmos.  We’ll not be delving too deeply into astrophysics, instead we’ll be building fun models of comets and playing games which illustrate the apparent motion of a typical comet’s tail.  If you’re running this project as part of a school science program, you can double-count the activity as a P.E. session, as the central game involves more than a bit of running, though not likely moving as fast as a comet.

Just as a reminder, what I want to give you in these “Messy Monday” project descriptions is 1) enough background on the science that you’ll be prepared for questions and have resources to draw on if your own curiosity is triggered, 2) a play-by-play description of running the project with a group, recognizing that your time and resources are limited and your participants will vary in both interest and prior knowledge, and 3) a shopping list detailed enough to help you minimize your costs as well the time you have to spend assembling supplies.

Shoemaker-Levy panoramic (courtesy NASA-NSSDC)

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy heading for Jupiter (courtesy NASA-NSSDC)

So, What Do You Want to Know?

For thousands of years, humans have wondered at the strange visitations of comets.

Natural philosophers of the middle ages studying comets.

Natural philosophers of the middle ages studying comets.

In our time, people now understand that comets are not harbingers of doom or annunciations of the births of kings but fellow travelers in our solar system, icy bodies wheeling in towards the sun and shedding a fraction of their substance as they approach the sun.  However, a key aspect of the comet’s tail remains counterintuitive to us earthbound air-dwelling creatures.  The tail of a running horse flows behind her as she gallops, so we naturally expect that the tail of comet simply flies behind it as it plunges along its course.  But a comet’s behavior plays tricks with such expectations.

Where do comets come from?  The Solar System is a big place, but for most of us, the territory ends with Pluto, the Object Formerly Known as The Ninth Planet.

Great_Comet_of_1577 by Georgium Jacobum von Datschitz public domain

The Great Comet of 1577

However, if you’re a fan of Cosmos (either Carl Sagan’s or Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s version) or if your school is lucky enough to have new textbooks, then you’ll know about the Oort Cloud , that sphere of orbiting material from which most comets emerge.  Do you realize how much farther out this region is? On a scale of one inch per 100,000 miles, in which the orbit of Pluto would be one mile across, the distance from the Sun to the Oort Cloud would be the length of the state of California.  It’s even been hypothesized that the Oort clouds of neighboring stars may physically interact, exchanging comets.

The Oort cloud is a long way out, but it’s still a part of the Solar System, because the objects there are still subject to the Sun’s gravity.  Occasionally, a piece of this clutter is jostled from its orbit and begins the long fall towards the sun.  Depending on the path it takes as it zooms around the sun, the comet may slingshot out of the solar system entirely or it may settle into a new orbit, returning to loop around the sun on a regular schedule.   For instance, Comet Halley returns every 86 years.  The last time round, it actually came in ’86–1986 that is.  I was lucky enough to visit New Zealand that year, so I can confirm that Comet Halley was extremely unspectacular that year–only just barely visible.  Fortunately, New Zealand itself is spectacular every single day of any given year.    NASA was more successful, having a noticeable advantage in telescope access.

Babylonian Astronomers Wrote Down Their Observations of Halley in BCE 164

Babylonian Astronomers Wrote Down Their Observations of Halley in BCE 164

Comet Halley's Appearance Dooms King Harold in 1066

Comet Halley’s Appearance Dooms King Harold in 1066

Comet Halley in 1910

Comet Halley in 1910

Comet Halley in 1986 (Courtesy of NASA)

Comet Halley in 1986 (Courtesy of NASA)

                                                                                                                                                                                        But why do comets even have tails?  We don’t see shiny tails glowing in the wakes of our planets.  Well, it all has to do with the change in environmental conditions as the comet moves towards the Sun.  Comets are composed of water ice, frozen gases, rocky matter, and even traces of organic compounds.  As this frozen jumble approaches the sun, it warms up enough that the various ices in the outer layers of the comet become gaseous—water vapor, ammonia, carbon dioxide.  These gases bubble and boil into a misty cloud, so the comet will have an atmosphere of sorts, called the coma, for the duration of its passage through the inner Solar System.  The gas expulsions may even shoot out of the comet’s rocky layers like jets, causing the comet itself to tumble as it falls along its inward path.  At the same time, very small-scale “dust” particles are swept from the cometary nucleus.  This is not the heavily-organic dust we find under our furniture here on Earth (if you really want to know what’s in household dust don’t use “Google images”;  stick to text searches or just ask your friendly neighborhood allergist).  What we mean is that the particle size—a few microns—is extremely fine, about the same size as the particles in cigarette smoke.

We get our fabulous cometary tail once these newly-ejected gases and dust of the coma approach the sun just a bit closer, enough that the various solar emissions can have their ways with the comet’s atmosphere.   First, there is sunlight itself, which acts in several ways to provide us with the visual spectacle of the comet’s tail.

The simplest role of sunlight is to shine on the cloud of dust ejected from the nucleus.  That’s the main tail we see.  But that still doesn’t explain why the dust forms a tail at all:  the secret is that light, as electromagnetic radiation, actually exerts pressure on objects, and with tiny objects like cometary dust this radiation pressure force is enough to fan that  material out from the core.  Plus, there is a cool bonus “secret”: that most comets actually have two tails—one formed by the gases and one formed by the dust.  The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight blasts the gas particles, stripping away electrons, and so creating a mass of ionized gas, which fluoresces (mostly blue) in sunlight. Then those glowing blue ions are blasted in a straight line away from the sun by the solar wind, a stream of high-energy particles hurtling at supersonic speeds through the solar system.  The solar wind is a wonderfully intricate system in its own right, but for our purposes here it is most important to convey that, like earthly winds, it consists of particles moving at high speeds and that its direction is away from the Sun.

The result of all these combined forces is that a complex, continuously shifting cloud of gases and dust streams out from a comet during its time in the inner solar system and that tail—or, rather, pair of tails—points away from the sun, even when the comet is on its way back out to its origin.  (If you’re a die-hard comet enthusiast, you’ll know that the dust tail does curve inward a bit, as the small particles of dust battle with the solar forces, striving to curl into their own individual orbits about the sun, but from our earthly perspective, the outward forces have the upper hand.)

In the next installment, we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty of building our own comet models and playing a game of As the Comet Tail Flies.

Oh, yeah, and I’m not making things up about radiation pressure.  Consider the prospects for spaceflight under the power of light!

The Japanese IKAROS spaceprobe in flight (artist's depiction by Andrzej Mirecki).

The Japanese IKAROS spaceprobe in flight (artist’s depiction by Andrzej Mirecki).

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