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III: Worlds and Aliens
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III: Worlds and Aliens
by Charles L. Adler
Wizards, Aliens, and Starships
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents Page
1 Playing the Game
1.1 The Purpose of the Book
1.2 The Assumptions I Make
1.3 Organization
1.4 The Mathematics and Physics You Need
1.5 Energy and Power
I: Potter Physics
2 Harry Potter and The Great Conservation Laws
2.1 The Taxonomy of Fantasy
2.2 Transfiguration and the Conservation of Mass
2.3 Disapparition and the Conservation of Momentum
2.4 Reparo and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
3 Why Hogwarts Is So Dark
3.1 Magic versus Technology
3.2 Illumination
4 Fantastic Beasts and How to Disprove Them
4.1 Hic sunt Dracones
4.2 How to Build a Giant
4.3 Kleiber’s Law, Part 1: Mermaids
4.4 Kleiber’s Law, Part 2: Owls, Dragons, Hippogriffs, and Other Flying Beasts
II: Space Travel
5 Why Computers Get Better and Cars Can’t (Much)
5.1 The Future of Transportation
5.2 The Reality of Space Travel
5.3 The Energetics of Computation
5.4 The Energetics of the Regular and the Flying Car
5.5 Suborbital Flights
6 Vacations in Space
6.1 The Future in Science Fiction: Cheap, Easy Space Travel?
6.2 Orbital Mechanics
6.3 Halfway to Anywhere: The Energetics of Spaceflight
6.4 Financing Space Travel
7 Space Colonies
7.1 Habitats in Space
7.2 O’Neill Colonies
7.3 Matters of Gravity
7.4 Artificial “Gravity” on a Space Station
7.5 The Lagrange Points
7.6 Off-Earth Ecology and Energy Issues
7.7 The Sticker Price
8 The Space Elevator
8.1 Ascending into Orbit
8.2 The Physics of Geosynchronous Orbits
8.3 What Is a Space Elevator, and Why Would We Want One?
8.4 Why Buildings Stand Up—or Fall Down
8.5 Stresses and Strains: Carbon Nanotubes
8.6 Energy, “Climbers,” Lasers, and Propulsion
8.7 How Likely Is It?
8.8 The Unapproximated Elevator
9 Manned Interplanetary Travel
9.1 It’s Not an Ocean Voyage or a Plane Ride
9.2 Kepler’s Three Laws
9.3 The Hohmann Transfer Orbit
9.4 Delta v and All That
9.5 Getting Back
9.6 Gravitational Slingshots and Chaotic Orbits
9.7 Costs
10 Advanced Propulsion Systems
10.1 Getting There Quickly
10.2 Why Chemical Propulsion Won’t Work
10.3 The Most Famous Formula in Physics
10.4 Advanced Propulsion Ideas
10.5 Old “Bang-Bang”: The Orion Drive
10.6 Prospects for Interplanetary Travel
11 Speculative Propulsion Systems
11.1 More Speculative Propulsion Systems
11.2 Mass Ratios for Matter-Antimatter Propulsion Systems
11.3 Radiation Problems
12 Interstellar Travel and Relativity
12.1 Time Enough for Anything
12.2 Was Einstein Right?
12.3 Some Subtleties
12.4 Constant Acceleration in Relativity
13 Faster-Than-Light Travel and Time Travel
13.1 The Realistic Answer
13.2 The Unrealistic Answer
13.3 Why FTL Means Time Travel
13.4 The General Theory
13.5 Gravitational Time Dilation and Black Holes
13.6 Wormholes and Exotic Matter
13.7 The Grandfather Paradox and Other Oddities
III: Worlds and Aliens
14 Designing A Habitable Planet
14.1 Adler’s Mantra
14.2 Type of Star
14.3 Planetary Distance from Its Star
14.4 The Greenhouse Effect
14.5 Orbital Eccentricity
14.6 Planetary Size and Atmospheric Retention
14.7 The Anna Karenina Principle and Habitable Planets
14.8 Imponderables
15 The Scientific Search for Spock
15.1 Exoplanets and Exoplants
15.2 Doppler Technique
15.3 Transits and the Kepler Mission
15.4 The Spectral Signatures of Life
15.5 Alien Photosynthesis
16 The Mathematics of Talking With Aliens
16.1 Three Views of Alien Intelligences
16.2 Motivation for Alien Contact
16.3 Drake-Equation Models and the Mathematics of Alien Contact
IV: Year Googol
17 The Short-Term Survival of Humanity
17.1 This Is the Way the World Will End
17.2 The Short-Term: Man-Made Catastrophes
18 World-Building
18.1 Terraforming
18.2 Characteristics of Mars
18.3 Temperature and the Martian Atmosphere
18.4 Atmospheric Oxygen
18.5 Economics
19 Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds
19.1 Dyson’s Sphere
19.2 The Dyson Net
19.3 Niven’s Ringworld
19.4 The Ringworld, GPS, and Ehrenfest’s Paradox
19.5 The Ringworld Is Unstable!
19.6 Getting There from Here—and Do We Need To?
20 Advanced Civilizations and the Kardashev Scale
20.1 The Kardashev Scale
20.2 Our Type 0.7 Civilization
20.3 Type I Civilizations
20.4 Moving Upward
20.5 Type II Civilizations
20.6 Type III Civilizations
21 A Googol Years
21.1 The Future of the Future
21.2 The “Short Term”: Up to 500 Million Years or so
21.3 The “Medium Term”: Up to about 10^13 Years
21.4 The “Long Term”: Up to a Googol Years
21.5 Black Hole–Powered Civilizations
21.6 Protons Decay—or Do They?
21.7 A Googol Years—All the Black Holes Evaporate
21.8 Our Last Bow
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Newton’s Three Laws of Motion
Bibliography
Index
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13 Faster-Than-Light Travel and Time Travel
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14 Designing A Habitable Planet
PART III
WORLDS AND ALIENS
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