Playing with Planets

The following sections are included:

• Preface

• Contents

My spaceship was painted a brilliant white and sported sleek red and black stripes. The small hatch windows appeared black in color, designed as they were to block the hazardous ultraviolet light emanating from the suns. Take-off and landing were executed vertically. Once on the ground, the spacecraft rested on its small stabilizing fins, to which its three or four engines were attached. You could tell the spaceship had already raveled a great deal; its hull was dented quite a bit. My spaceship had brought me to loads of planets and moons in faraway star systems. The elliptical orbits I chose to navigate around the planets no longer held any secrets for me. I had also learned why it is necessary to protect yourself against the blistering and tempestuous solar winds…

President kennedy had made a promise, and he had kept his word. Within a decade, an American had set foot on the Moon. It was July 1969. I was glued to the television, mesmerized. Interplanetary travel was now within our reach. At that very moment, space travel was proven beyond any reasonable doubt. The biggest obstacle was getting off the ground. We have all seen it on television; apparently, blasting off into space requires an immense firework display…

After years of research, Professor Prtplwyszpo finally accomplished what he was after; he had constructed a shrinking machine. Whoever ventured into the machine through the little trap door emerged from the other side roughly 10% smaller. If the volunteer repeated this process seven times, he would shrink to less than half his original size. If passed through the machine often enough, the original size could be reduced to whatever fraction you wanted. After a hundred cycles, a medical team would be able to enter a patient through his nostrils and travel to the affected area in the body to perform revolutionary operations with microscopic instruments. After successful completion, the team would walk back through the machine exactly the same number of times to regain its original size…

It was the early '80s. As a physicist I was connected to a computer network, which I could use to send messages to all my colleagues in the whole world. Sometimes it would take only half an hour to receive a reply! What a privilege, and how practical! It combined the advantages of a telephone call and a written letter: the messages were delivered with the speed of a telephone call, but with ‘email’ one could send detailed and precise messages without having to disturb the recipient; your mail would be read at whatever time was convenient. If only other folks knew about this! But at that time, no one besides physicists had heard of ‘email’…

A large part of the information revolution is still ahead of us, and exactly what it will bring is mostly subject to speculation. Many products will be enhanced with much more elaborate control systems than we have now, so that tools will be cleaner, safer and more efficient. A good example is television and computer screens…

Anyone who thinks about artificial intelligence, envisions robots. According to science fiction, these are machines that resemble human beings, by walking and talking just like us. But what we really need are machines that are not like us; ones that can operate in environments that are dangerous or uncomfortable for humans. They should be controlled remotely, so they won't have to carry their own intelligence inside those little round containers that house their optical detectors…

With a degree in naval engineering, my father was a senior executive for a shipbuilder on the Wilton-Feyenoord wharf at Rotterdam harbor. The company was tasked with the construction of enormous cruise liners that were becoming very popular at the time and which enabled people to sail from the Hook of Holland to New York in ultimate luxury. They were floating palaces. The flagship of the fleet was christened New Amsterdam. After that, cruise liners were given similar sounding names of Dutch towns, such as the Volendam and the Maasdam, and subsequent ships were given names of non-existent cities. My father worked on the construction of the Maasdam and the Rijndam, which were launched in 1951 — the Rijn (Rhine) is an existing river, but there is no town called Rijndam. After that came the Statendam and others…

Cities floating on water or in the air, and all of them as ecologically friendly as possible. Will this be a realistic future, inspired by science fiction? To be frank, I doubt whether those beautiful ecological ideals will be attainable, as we can't even stop destroying the environment we're in, let alone change our ways in a habitat that we have not yet been able to build. Rather, the mere existence of floating cities in the future would prove the contrary, and tell a gruesome story of the continued waste of huge amounts of energy from burning fossil fuels; our climate irrevocably changed, the sea level risen all over the globe, and my beautiful country, the Netherlands, under water. Because we were not able to change our wasteful ways, building floating cities was our only alternative to continue living on Earth…

There was quite a lot of wind. I didn't have to go to school that day. My kite was pulling hard at the string I was holding in my hand. The kite was pulling a bit too hard in fact, and every now and then it swerved dangerously. It wouldn't be the first time. Only a few days ago a gust of wind had pulled the spool right out of my hand and I had to run after my kite for three blocks before I got it back. Unfortunately, my spool had taken a different route. The wind blew my kite over houses, antennae and balconies, but it was now dangling above the busy main street of The Hague, where I grew up. If the string broke, there would certainly be an accident — motorists and bike riders would be rather surprised by the sudden appearance of a rope across the road…

We have lingered on the Earth for long enough now. We want to go up, straight into space! We have already put people on the Moon, and many unmanned space vehicles have found their way to other planets and moons in our solar system. A few of those are about to exit our solar system, but in astronomical terms, they won't, get very far. Long before they get anywhere near the interesting worlds outside our solar system, they will cease to function…

It was July, 1965. I was at my parents' summer house in the south of France, far removed from civilization. But the newspaper, which I loved reading, back then as much as now, was nonetheless delivered to the cabin every morning. I expected some news about planet Mars — and I got it: the first American spacecraft to visit the red planet, the Mariner 4, had arrived and was sending pictures of the surface to NASA's space centre on Earth, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)…

Many observers have noted that in the last few decades all sorts of developments have taken place that most science fiction authors did not see coming at all. One example is the Internet. There were a few though, who did. I remember a story, long ago, of a journalist who did not only report the news, but who also reworked and reported the information he received in such a way that he completely controlled what happened next, literally making the news, without anyone noticing. As it happened, he was extremely well-connected to all the computers in the world and he possessed a world class computer himself, one that was semi-intelligent…

The idea of creating reproducing robots is an old one. Just before he died in 1957, mathematician John von Neumann wrote a discourse in which he provided what he claimed to be the mathematical proof that self-reproducing robots can exist.

Well, based on our current knowledge, it is easily shown that such robots do indeed exist; every living organism is testament to that, after all, they reproduce themselves. It is one of the most amazing features of our universe, that after a long series of extremely complex processes, creatures emerged that are able to produce off spring. But that's not all. Not only do they have the capacity to reproduce, but they can also make small changes in these reproductions. We call these changes ‘mutations’, and in the long history of life on Earth, these mutations allowed progeny to adapt to varying circumstances and, eventually, to supersede their parents…

In the previous chapter, I showed how to reach for the stars without breaking any natural laws, but there are just as many important issues to address closer to Earth. I already mentioned the information revolution and nanotechnology, which will lead to as many unpredictable developments…

In the meantime, another silent revolution is taking place: in the area of materials. Materials are becoming better: lighter and stronger. This is evident from the construction of new buildings and bridges. One of the most important components of these new materials is fiber…

Let me alternate fiction with a true story. Sidney Coleman was a well-known and influential scientist in my area of expertise, affiliated with the reputable Harvard University. Sidney happened to be a great fan of science fiction. A good friend of his was Carl Sagan, the author of widely-read popular science books and television series, such as Cosmos, a Personal Voyage. Sagan also set up a system with which he hoped to discover extraterrestrial civilizations, by meticulously analyzing radio signals emanating from the cosmos. This was the so-called SETI-Project, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence…

Until now, I have limited myself to only those adventures that humanity could plunge into without blatantly offending too many natural laws and without making too many unreasonable investments. Everything is in accordance with what we now know, or rather, what I now know, of nature's laws…

If you thought that the previous chapter was not eccentric enough, then I advise you to take any science fiction book off the shelf, as most of these authors write about much more unrealistic or even completely impossible notions. Along these lines, Ed Regis describes fabulous futuristic fantasies in his book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge. People who see their death approach, either because they are terminally ill or are of old age, have their bodies frozen and stored, in the expectation that science will be able to de-ice and heal them. But will the delicate refrigeration procedure be carried out correctly? Can we trust future civilizations to willingly defrost anyone? Won't they say, “too bad, but you are permanently damaged and we will send your body into space with the rest of our garbage”? Regis calls this unbridled optimism ‘hybris’, a mixture of extreme arrogance and megalomania with gullibility…

The following sections are included:

• Websites

• Illustrations