h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, beautiful pics, thank you.

Just think, if we set off at the speed of light, we'd get there in 1400 years. It might have settled down by then...

heheh. I'm in. Let's pack tonight.

Kepler 452b, I agree with the official estimate of its surface gravity, about twice Earth normal, which places it near the limit for inhabitability.

Rats, at any rate, adapt successfully to a 2 G environment.

It might be rather difficult for older people to adapt.

It might also be a developmental problem for children, especially during gestation and their early devopmental years.

No reason though, why it couldn't be healthy for particularly adults between 21 and 42 years of age inclusive.

I'd want to support a colonial effort with an O'Niell type space habitat (you'll need one anyway to make interstellar colonial voyage) serving among other purposes as a childbirth and child development center and well as a retirement community.




Given its size and terrestrial character, its probably a water world with a depth greater than the terrestrial ocean and few or no landmasses emerging from the sea.

Doesn't necessarily have to be, though.




If nought else, might well support a whale and bowl of petunias.

Whales, on account of the bouyant character of the sea don't need to as concerned as land dwelling life forms about the gravity.

A global ocean doesn't have to be salt and might be fresh enough to support the petunias.

Hullo ITI!

Interesting Kepler 452b visions! Thankyou!

I reckon the interface between science fiction and science fact will be abuzz with this one.



Interesting word, interface. I'm never quite sure what it means. Did it change meaning with the onset of computer culture? Or did computer culture just steal the word and an existing concept?

There's Interzone, which I associate with Burroughs, but that always seemed like a seedy science fiction border town. Must check what Interzone is, separate from its Burroughs connotations.

Interface, to me, also suggests a bordertown, or borderline, but not like Interzone, not solid images, more like an energy field, where systems or concepts or cultures or thought processes meet and interact and go through changes.



Arranges petunias and thinks about the future.



I just checked what an O'Neill space habitat is. Because I don't really know anything , I like to see what pictures come to me before I find out what things really are.

I was almost right, but I think the O'Neill concept is more viable.

I envisaged a retirement community in a huge metallic disc-shaped structure, with amazing star-viewing windows in the ceiling, and fish and whale viewing windows in the floor, like an aquarium. I'm not sure if it's floating in space or water, seems to be a bit of both, stars above, water below.

That's your fault, the bit about the whales.

There are silver doors in the walls leading to anterooms containing comfy armchairs and flashing neon sculptures/entities with speakers, with vases of petunias placed on top of them, in a slightly arty, bohemian fashion.

Plug in the headphones, settle into an armchair and flip through the infinite music menu (cosmic jukeboxe!) heheh.

The fact that I saw myself in this establishment, 102 yrs old, wearing lime green flared loons and a knitted tanktop is a bit of a setback. 70s in space.



Strange thing. I think this retirement disc is a thoughtform. It can become whatever you want it to be. Because the lady in the armchair next to me thinks she's in a guest house in Stromness, a place she loved very much in her life, with vases of petunias on the window sill, along with photographs of her life.

The O'Neill type habitat envisioned for Earth-Luna L5, making an equilateral triangle with the Earth and Moon, trailing the Moon in its orbit, envisioned as drum between 3 and 4 times its diameter in length and perhaps 20 miles or so in diameter, will orient itself along its long axis with the center of gravity of the system, the Earth itself, on account a process called libration.

The smaller centripetal artificial gravity wheel, which needs to be about a mile and a third in diameter to produce an artificial gravity physiologically indistinguishable from Earth normal will tend to keep its orientation as it orbits, so that on one side of its orbit, one axis will be facing the Earth, edge on a quarter of the way around its orbit, its other axis facing the planet half way around and edge on again at 3/4.

Space colonies of this type can be located as close as about twice geostationary altitude and can also serve as ideal interplanetary colonial population movers, carrying everything essential to operation of a industrial space colony aboard.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5history.htm

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/watch-the-first-artificial-gravity-experiment/

https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/exercise-artificial-gravity-space-0702

Ooops! I didn't notice that pesky 's'.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/exercise-artificial-gravity-space-0702

wowzum, ITI! This is an entire culture, a happening, a situation. I shall peruse these links and become several million times wiser. Splendid!

h2g2 is the school of the world and the otherworld and all the worlds that exist between the world and the otherworld, the inner and the outer, the yin and the yang the this and the that.



And all this goes on, inventions take shape, new worlds are discovered, genius becomes manifest, while I write pieces of non-writing about green ooze. . I have no life.

I'll make it into a (most definitely not for review) guide entry, , simply so I can change it around, if the interface between the There and the Here turns out to be not what I thought it was. Or if I take a liking to spinach and watercress smoothies. Then I'll have to change the end.

A87857374

I'm sceptical about the retirement community. I can just imagine it. When you get to a certain age, they invite you to a grand party in the retirement community. You sit on comfortable chairs, while assistants ply you with food and . Towards the end of the party, they slip something into the wine. Then it's just a case of disposing of the bodies.

I'm not so sure that a 2 gravity environment would continue to be sustainable much after 42 (I'm serious about that age, it marks a critical stage, the end of youth. Senescent changes begin about 14 years later).

Gravity control is technically possible only in outer space.

There one can adjust it to pretty much whatever one likes.

So at 42, one starts a second career in the space colony.

Sounds like a classic mvp story in the making. With ITI as scientific advisor.

MVP?




http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/kepler-452b-alien-life-search

Aftetthoughts; that Kepler 452b is markedly older than the Earth increases the chance that it may have evolved intelligence and civilization; it so much older than the Earth that civilization may have come and gone; Hal Clement's paradox operates: The rate of technological advancement is so high that the period over which two civilizations are near enough the level of technological sophistication to allow communication may be comparatively brief.

On the last, we're seeing a development of the character already, with fiberoptic tele-communication cables replacing older electrical conduction systems.

While with the latter, they generate electronic noise in the ELF wave band potentially detectable over interstellar distances, fiberoptic cables of themselves produce no electronic noise.

Hullo ITI! Fibre optic tele-communication cables? Interesting. All I know about things fibre optic are those lovely fibre optic Christmas trees , so I'm hearing a kind of lit up communication coming through the cable.



What?? Civilisation on Kepler 452b may have come and gone already?? Now I'm definitely going to have weird dreams tonight. .

Already I just saw an entire civilisation appear and disappear in what seemed like less than a second. At first I saw the silouettes of a thousand million winged thoughtforms, and maybe a few bats flitting through acropolis type pillars, but that's just my imagination being quite stupid.

(Hmm, i did like those winged thoughtforms. Perhaps they could replace The Green Ooze (I'm reinventing my masterwork Guide Entry, because it got too stupid even for me, even though it made me laugh at three in the morning.)

Imagine that though, back to what we were talking about. Adds a different perspective to the 'is there anybody out there?' question. Well, son, there was an entire civilisation out there, in fact, many civilisations, even while we watch the stars, civilisations are falling and renewing.

The new issue of is up, with MVP's song parody in it, check it out!

Ho hum. Evening all.



I'm having a good time with my ongoing masterwork Guide Entry. . Beware, it will stray into journal postings, because it likes to stray. It wanders through h2g2 in a thick cotton nightshirt, holding a spluttering candle, looking for a mirror, and its second cousin.

It's changed from being a story entitled The Green Ooze, to being a ramble about many things, excluding The Green Ooze, but including heart shaped halos, an appreciation of h2g2, autographed socks and what creative works will I leave under the mattress (so to speak), for posterity.

Left under mattress (for posterity). Ongoing list.

Notes for a short story about a man who is bitten by an origami swan. (story yet to be written, hoping to pay a friend, a ghost writer, or an actual ghost).

A sheet of 26 tiny photographs of a cormorant, the same cormorant, which failed to move or do anything interesting for the duration of the photo shoot.

A story about a map of a fictional town, showing a new shopping centre with lovely lit up fountains in the plaza, and the exact place where my Aunty Joy had a mystical experience, just outside Sainsbury's in fact.

A CD of curious electronic rhythms, with disconcerting yet delicious echo, otherwordly.

A booklet of sketchy poems, the ink all smudged with tears, pages torn in anger, the diary of a war, so many wounded souls.

tbc

What would you leave under the mattress (so to speak), for posterity?

Very interesting posting about a walk past the Bus Station.

Today I had to go to the Post Office collection office to collect a parcel, and my walk took me past the Bus Station which was quite strange because I thought about the years when I would take the National Express night bus to London (equivalent to the Greyhound) to visit my family.

It always stopped in at Exeter, even though in those days I boarded it about forty five minutes further down the road. And it was always c-c-c-cold in the Bus Station at one o clock in the morning, and there was all the commotion of people boarding and someone would always wedge in beside me, just when I didn't need the human contact.

I would listen to my Sony Walkman all night, no ipods then, just cassettes, so funny, cassettes? haha The bus would arrive in London at 6 am. I would pile out with my cassettes and my crumpled hopes, feeling like a stray dog that had just had a Near Death Experience, which involved chasing a strange looking rabbit across the pastures of the afterlife, and had returned feeling a bit wruff. haha. Rough. Wruff.

Anyway, there was a notice in the Post Office collection office telling us that parcels for today couldn't be collected until tomorrow, which is totally irrelevant to my tale, except it meant that I walked back past the Bus Station, which I would have done anyway, but hey.

It was lovely because the sun came through and illuminated even the soulful scruffy old Bus Station cafe, and there were yellow and orange flowers in a flowerbed beside the road, which looked suddenly radiant, and I felt completely joyful.

I remember bus stations, too. I always used to take the bus from Pittsburgh to Dubois (short stop at Punxsutawney), change at Dubois for Williamsport, change at Williamsport for Elmira, and get there at 3 am.

The ride took almost 12 hours, and I didn't mind that - sometimes, you got a lovely view of full moons over ice-covered open fields, and stuff like that - but I hated it that my dad insisted on getting up at 3 am to fetch me from the station. He wouldn't let me take a cab, because frankly, he feared Elmira's apparently lone cabdriver, a fierce-looking woman who smoked cigars. I am not making this up.

Anyway, one time, I decided to take another route. Leaving Pittsburgh at midnight, I rode to Harrisburg, where I changed buses shortly before dawn. As we headed straight north through Delaware Water Gap, the sun rose and the place looked magical. The bus driver, disgustingly wide awake for someone who started work at 5 am, entertained all 3 of his passengers with tales of the history of the place, pointing out sites of interest on the way.

I got to Elmira at 11.30 am. My mother was energized and wanted to go out to lunch, which we did. I yawned the whole way through.

Jet lag? Forget it. Bus lag is the worst... But you see a lot that way.

My son regularly takes the night bus from Glasgow to London Victoria and back.

I'm more of a train travel expert myself. I remember getting the train to Aberystwyth. We passed through Wolverhampton which, in those days, meant miles of industrial dereliction. But we changed at Shrewsbury and the line crossed mountain country, stopped at Macynlleth and then the horizons opened as the we saw the coast at Dovey Junction. This was a single line part of the way and the engine driver used to slow at a signal box and hand over a big metal token to the signal man.

To prove he'd slowed down enough? What a cool thing to do!

We saw a very long freight train in Dubois today. It brought back childhood memories of train enthusiasm.

Why was I in Dubois, you ask? (By the way, that's pronounced 'DEW-boys'. I am not making that up. Though they have a day spa with a sign 'Du Bois -with an accent on the 'i'- Day Spa'.)

Oh, why was I there? To experience a MIRACLE.

A charming young Asian fellow - eye doctor by trade - worked some real magic. I put my chin on the metal rest for about 10 minutes. He dropped some stuff in my eyes, told me 'Don't blink' (and I thought of Doctor Who, and didn't), and I saw some very bright lights.

Then I stumbled out into the sunlight. About four hours later, the veil lifted...

The world is so bright. It's so full of colour. I can SEE AGAIN! I don't have to have my text up to 300%. I can even read PLINY...

You know what it feels like? It feels like this, and it needs a hymn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRDxpmV27p8