MPJ

When it comes to the space exploration within hard science fiction, the one where science is embedded in the narrative to the point that it is impossible to tell a story without it, only rare novels stand out among all the others in the ocean of short stories and novels published online and within traditional ways. Sure, it's not really possible to be familiar with the entire vast universe of sci-fi literature of today compared to past times, especially before the internet, when it was easier not to miss a noticeable book on the public shelf.  However, even today, the true classics in the genre are easily recognizable, perhaps in all those moments during or after reading when we wonder not if the plot is possible or scientifically plausible but when we fail to distinguish the fiction part from the real science. To achieve this, authors can't rely on their writing narrative only but also to their ability to successfully entangle science and fiction, and not only for those who u...

"Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of life and the entire structure of, well, everything. And yet, at that moment I felt like more is coming. Like the truth only started to unveil and I am about to understand the fate of what was undoubtedly beyond my comprehension.. The fate of the universe.. No less." Revelation of Life - part three Choosing Planets Revelation of Life - prequel To the loving memory of my father November 6, 2020 Revelation of Life part four Thea Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of l...

Sooner or later computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example the size of entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These gods-like engineers of such future simulation will indeed face a decision point regarding which degree of limitation to create for their simulated entities or artificial intelligence units in order for them to never reach the point of finding the proof that their world is in fact nothing more than just a series of electrical or optical currents of one inconceivably powerful futuristic computer. If created right, there's no doubt that the inner world of all those hypothetical units would seem to be as real to them as our own very reality to us. So, considering the state of obvious, the question arises by itself - if our own reality is such simulation and we are nothing but AI units within some alien quantum computer, wh...

Let's turn our imagination to the edge and do something different today. We can call it thought experiment, childish game, day dream, science fiction, pure fantasy or whatever we want but let's move the boundaries far away from Earth, far away from our Solar system, even farther from our Galaxy and do something wild. Let's choose a planet. Or to be more precise, let's select one in the vastness of cosmos and move away from this Earth and start new life. Of course in day dreams we are allowed to do this just because the imagination is what our species differs from others on Earth. Ok, to begin this little endeavor, we need a little astronomy to start with. What we know for sure is that our galaxy alone contains more than 200 billion stars, majority of them not so much different from our Sun and by using basic statistical study based on planet finder's microlensing technique there are approximately 100 billion planets orbiting them. Perhaps more. Multiple that b...

"At some point, the gluons will no longer be able to hold the quarks together, and the hadrons will decay. Which will mean the end of matter in this universe." - Albert Einstein  1 As it seems, in our universe, nothing is made to last. Eventually, everything gets old and dies or changes or decays into something else, and I am not referring to the life forms only but all matter in the cosmos. For all we know, this might not be true within our own macroworld alone, but also deep below, the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe has a tendency to achieve the lowest energy state and to finally rest within a stable system, even if that means going through various changes or decays. In the quantum world, this could be true for the Higgs field as well. According to Hawking, if it becomes meta-stable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge and consume everything in order to eventually reach the lowest energy state possible. F...

Last year, during our visit to Cretan site of Knossos and their wonderful museum in Heraklion dedicated in large part to the one of the greatest peaceful periods in human history, I didn't hide admiration for old Minoans and their way of life. I even said I would move to Crete without second thoughts if I had a time machine, mainly to avoid hostility of the world order we are currently living in today. At the time, considering only European continent, I was under impression that cultures like Minoan were rare and the Bronze Age society we glimpsed on Crete was maybe walking on the edge of being the only one in the history of mankind. To say the least, I couldn't be more wrong. Only couple of millenniums before during the late Neolithic period, known as Chalcolithic or simply the Copper Age, there was an old European society that lived for centuries and also flourished in peaceful harmony and perfect equilibrium with nature, themselves and their immediate land where they buil...

Let me start this story with remarkable opening of the Michael D. Gordin's book named "The Pseudoscience Wars". The full quote is this: "No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself - I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts". And this is the ultimate truth - there is no pseudoscience. It's not the real thing. You can, with more or less enthusiasm, add adjective "pseudo" to anything you like and get yourself the bad or opposite meaning of the original word. But in the world we are currently living in and with, for example, TV shows like " Ancient Aliens " being vastly popular than attending lectures or reading published scientific papers by professional archaeologists and historians, pseudo combined with science are now recognized word in almost ...

I remember reading an article in the Guardian last year with title "Our galaxy may contain billions of planets with the same mass as Earth". Surely, it is valid scientific guess as it is but if it is really true, my first thought would be that intelligent life as we know it (assuming we are intelligent species) is as rare as we can imagine. If they are not, the big question is why we are still not able to detect any single proof of their existence or still not eaten by some violent alien species? The only logical answer that we are first one walks on the edge of impossibility to me. Most likely we are missing something important, a discovery as important as fire was. While this statement is still accurate and generally speaking plausible, let's think a little more about it. So to start with the original statement, is there really that many planets with Earth like properties in our galaxy? Ever since I read the Drake equation for the first time (shown above), I coul...

It's a well known fact that our universe is, as far as we know today, four dimensional space-time continuum with three spacial coordinates and the time playing a role of the fourth one. We are perfectly capable of traveling backwards and forwards within first three spatial coordinates, but is it possible to do the same on the fourth one? I am sure you would agree that it is not too exciting going up or down or left or right but traveling through time could be something special. But, is it possible? Let's explore all the theories, share some stories and read about one connected hoax.

Have you ever been in situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with: "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is of course Parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and micro organisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life which in most cases leads to host's malfunction, to use raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessne...

In wide variety of entire expanse of science fiction genre, Martians are inevitable players. Even the most popular "Little Green Men" phrase from the early comic books, at the beginning referred to the aliens from Mars. However, this year, when it comes to motion pictures, two great master pieces will come to life and all without LGM in classical meaning of the word. There will be no aliens on Mars this time and all the Martians in upcoming movie and TV series will actually be humans. Moreover, the science in background is returning to the front door and accompanying stories will immediately be more valid, more plausible and more ... amazing. And this is what I like the most in good and old Verne's type of Sci-Fi. In short, give me more science and just a hint of fiction to spice the things up and I am happy. You probably already guessed, it is about filming amazing books I have already written about on the blog - "The Martian" by Andy Weir and "The ...