Science fiction is an important part of the culture of modern society, starting from the Renaissance, when philosophers and scientists defined the principles of the scientific method of investigation, thanks to which we, today, can use electricity, cars and cars in our daily lives. internal combustion engines, airplanes, television and the internet with our smartphones.
Science fiction narrative embraces within itself all the cultural themes on which human beings have reflected since the dawn of civilization: existential themes, themes on understanding the world, political themes, technical themes on how to solve the practical problems of everyday life , and also moral issues.
The faculties that the human being uses to think, however, are not only those of rational thought, but are also, and very often, the faculties of emotional thought, or sentimental thought, or the unconscious thought typical of the dream experience, the night, when we dream.
As has already been said in this Blog, from the moment in which science fiction narration welcomed within it those mythical discourses that are part of human culture, these discourses were incorporated with all the forms of thought used to narrate this or that theme.
Thus, it happened that the political theme of a people who use emotional thought to describe their fear of being attacked and invaded by another people was incorporated into the science fiction narrative, producing dozens and dozens of stories of extraterrestrials invading the Earth through a war.
Or, it happened that the biological theme of prehistoric men using emotional thought to describe their fear of being attacked by some tiger was incorporated into science fiction narrative, producing dozens and dozens of science fiction stories where there are ravenous space monsters attacking unfortunate astronauts to feed on their bodies.
Or, also, it happened that the existential theme of a people who use mystical thought to describe their hope of meeting the 'angels of paradise' was incorporated into the science fiction narrative, producing dozens and dozens of stories of more or less luminous extraterrestrials, who they land on our planet and bring us their message of Peace, Knowledge, and Universal Wisdom.
Now, it is clear that as long as fictional stories are told to entertain readers or cinema audiences who love to spend their time fantasizing freely about engaging themes, such as those of science fiction, well, any way of presenting science fiction topics can go more than well, if the narrative is well carried out.
But when we decide to think about the possibility that certain facts, described in science fiction culture, could ever happen or be a reality of our universe, then in this case the matter is very different.
It is necessary to use rational thinking, typical of scientific studies, social studies, economic studies, political studies, historical studies and all those other investigations of rational research on which the pragmatic culture of our modern civilization is based.
To get an idea on how to investigate the feasibility of certain science fiction technological products, or the possibility of certain events described in science fiction culture occurring, here are three very simple examples for which the scientific disciplines and technologies useful for discussion.
1. Jet-engined interplanetary spaceships
In most science fiction films with a space setting you see spaceships equipped with propulsion nozzles capable of giving a push in the direction you want to reach.
The energy source that produces the thrust can vary from film to film, it can be atomic, it can be ionic energy, or any type of energy capable of producing enough thrust to make the spaceship travel at the speed of light or even faster.
The fact that it is currently impossible for us earthlings to build such powerful and, in some cases, such enormous propulsion engines, is already a reason to consider such technology a science fiction topic.
Let's add the fact, then, that imagining interplanetary and interstellar travel as possible thanks to the expulsion power of similar propulsion nozzles is rather suggestive and poetic and we will understand why this spaceship technological solution is so hard to abandon from film productions.
While such a form of spaceship solution for traveling between planets may seem rationally valid, this is, based on Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, absolutely useless.
In fact, with a similar form of space navigation, after a year of travel, a spaceship would not even be able to cover the distance between Earth and Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us among all those in the galaxy.
The problems that this form of interplanetary navigation cannot solve are mainly two:
1. The increase in the mass of a body as the speed increases and therefore one would not be able to have a propulsive energy of a measure close to infinity the closer one reaches speeds to that of light. This physics calculation, considered universally valid by all physicists in the world, makes us say that it will never be possible to build an engine capable of pushing a spaceship at a speed greater than that of light.
2. The unimaginable distance of the stars, from each other others, so much so that the star of Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away from Earth, is the only one so close to us. The other stars of the so-called 'Local Group' are tens of light years away from us. Traveling, then, with a propulsion engine, adhering to the Space-Time Continuum of the universe, to move around the galaxy is beyond ridiculous.
Even resorting to cryogenic hibernation of the crew, an interplanetary journey using propulsion would take so many years, the further away one goes, that the batteries would have run out long ago, dooming the crew to certain death.
So how would it be possible to travel between the stars?
The only reasonable form of navigation that allows a starship to travel from one star system to another is by using a Space-Time Continuum Warp Drive.
Therefore, by having a Warp Drive, spaceships would no longer need the famous propulsion nozzles, so dear to science fiction culture.
In fact, a technology capable of bending the Space-Time Continuum according to quantum and gravitational laws would have long been able to move vehicles using gravitational engines, in cities, on airplanes, and for small orbital shifts, which would resort without delay to this type of engines to allow spaceships to move to make small maneuver movements, to land and to take off.
Such gravitational technology would make propulsion nozzles a thing of the distant past.
2. A human society under the political governance of computers
Another recurring theme in science fiction culture is the dominance of the computer society at the helm of the society of human beings.
Famous films on this theme are Alphaville - a new adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965), 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), The Terminator (1984); I, robots (2004).
Although this disturbing prospect of the future of humanity is capable of arousing a strong suggestion in the public, the fact that the greatest product of human ingenuity, the computer, could prove to be so well made as to be able to surpass the human being in matters such as intelligence and authority.
However, information technology is a science far from slipping out of the hands of humans.
Computers can be compared to biological intelligence just as puppets animated by mechanical gears can be compared to living beings. In puppets animated by gears there is not the slightest trace of life, just as in computers there is not the slightest trace of consciousness.
There are three fundamental intellectual, logical and technological principles that prevent a computer from deciding on its own what is best for itself or for human beings.
1. In a computer there is the absence of willpower.
2. A computer is not capable of having an intuitive understanding of an algorithm, it is only capable of solving it.
3. Designing and writing software for a computer is something that only a human being can do.
And here's a quick explanation of these three principles.
A computer does not have the awareness of its personal needs, such that they make it feel or even think about what it wants.
Without awareness of these personal needs, the computer is unable to intuit and understand the purpose of an algorithm, in order to satisfy its needs and those of others.
Without being able to understand the purpose of an algorithm, a computer is unable to improve the design of an algorithm designed by a human being, having detected any defects that limit the full achievement of the purpose of this algorithm.
A computer is not aware of the algorithm that makes it work, it cannot intuitively understand its overall functioning, but it knows how to navigate it like a driver, remembering where it has been and which destinations it needs to reach, managing to choose which road to take when finds himself at a crossroads.
If a computer can imitate human intelligence, this is allowed by the enormous memory that its hardware devices allow it to have.
In its enormous memory, the computer can execute numerous sub-routines, sometimes very complex and heavy in terms of bytes, which allow it to predict the outcome of a phenomenon through a simple statistical calculation of the probabilities that that input is provided to him from outside. This is why a computer seems to have understood what is happening around it, it simply recognizes what is happening because it has memory that similar cases have already happened and it is able to compare the possibilities and identify the one most similar to the situation that is happening checking. Like the word prompter in your smartphone's writing apps.
This is how current Artificial Intelligence is able to simulate human communication in internet chat sessions.
The thinking of a computer must be organized by the programmer according to the hardware where the program will run.
As computer technology evolves into increasingly powerful and complex models, the operating system programmer must know how to allocate instructions in portions of the computer's memory. The heavier the software, in terms of bytes, the more challenging it is for the programmer to find the right way to allocate portions of memory for this or that part of the software, without the program execution crashing. due to lack of space.
These are difficult decisions that only human intuition can resolve.
Software programmers often use their talent to put so many uses together on one storage device, so that all programs always find enough space to run.
You cannot teach a computer to be ingenious, since it is only able to distinguish what is true from what is false.
Faced with two exact solutions, the computer decides to choose the one used to a greater extent. Therefore, he is not capable of being innovative, because in that case he would have to come to believe in his own personal intuitive abilities, but artificial intelligence lacks them.
Artificial intelligence always needs a prompter, like an actor on a theater stage when he forgets his line.
Therefore, all that remains to be said is that the stories where in the future computers will dominate the society of human beings are very fascinating and suggestive, but do not have the slightest scientific basis.
3. Eating extraterrestrial food
In many science fiction stories, where the central topic is an Interplanetary Federation of which Earth is a part, we read or see situations where humans eat alien food and enjoy its exotic flavor, or even describe its benefits.
If this had actually happened, the human being who had eaten extraterrestrial food would have suffered food poisoning.
The biological principle that allows us humans and other animals to eat certain foods but not others is that in our digestive system we have a set of enzymes that each serve to break down a certain type of protein, or amino acid, present in meats, carbohydrates , or to break down other food substances such as fats, or other.
If by mistake we eat food that is food for other life forms but not for us, we end up feeling bad.
And not only with food suitable for other animals do we risk poisoning. In fact, there are many people who are allergic to certain foods, or there are people who suffer from celiac disease who cannot digest gluten, and there are also diabetics for whom the lack or absence of insulin, produced by the pancreas, prevents their cells from absorbing glucose, which accumulating in the blood leads to states of strong hyperglycemia which gives rise to serious disorders such as diabetic cardiomyopathy, arteriosclerosis, heart attack and stroke.
Furthermore, we also know that some of our foods can be dangerous for some animals, such as chocolate, salt, sugar, grapes, onion, they are dangerous for dogs and cats.
Stories of ferocious, ravenous aliens feeding on the bodies of unfortunate human astronauts lack scientific basis for another reason.
The digestion of animal proteins allows the metabolism to obtain the amino acids necessary for the manufacture of human proteins of many types and uses. The principle according to which this metabolic process is possible is the equality of the nitrogenous bases that underlie life on our planet. The fundamental principle is, essentially, that we humans, animals and plants function thanks to DNA built from the same bricks: Adenine - Thymine, Cytosine - Guanine.
The reason for this genetic sharing was beautifully described by Charles Darwin in his scientific work.
We, living beings on this planet, are linked by an evolutionary history that unites us deeply in the origin of our bodies, starting from a population of eukaryotic cells that lived in the primordial waters of the Earth starting 1.5 billion years ago .
Approaching the analysis of science fiction culture using scientific reality does not have the aim of reducing its cultural value, but rather serves to better identify the purpose that each type of science fiction narrative has.
Science fiction is the place of the myths of contemporary civilization, a complex system of mythologies that appeal to the consciences of all of us.
It is important to recognize this, because deluding ourselves that certain science fiction stories could be true would mean believing that mythology is the description of real-world phenomena.
But then is every science fiction topic a narrative of a mythological nature?
Not always.
Sometimes, science fiction welcomes narratives conducted with careful scientific rigor, for which the hypothesis of reality cannot be excluded.
For those who are interested in these particular cases, this Blog has some interesting explanations to give.
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