What might a real Hitch Hiker's Guide entry say?

Marc 182 wrote in message t...
In article ,
says...
This is prompted by my recently being amongst (BBC) Radio 4's audience
for the latest adaptation of part of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy series.

The part about Earth's entry in the guide being expanded from one to two
words is, of course, wonderful in its simple statement of how our true
significance may be in the grand scheme of things. Not wanting to deny
that in any way, I nevertheless started to wonder what a slightly longer
item could say.

What might another culture see as significant about Earth, summing us up
in a short entry that might equate to, say, just 50 English words?
Clearly, there can be no single "right" answer. Here's my shot for a
publication aimed at the scientifically-minded galactic tourist...


"Maturing rocky planet with cool water oceans. Impressive variety of
stationary life-forms harvesting radiated stellar energy and mobile
life-forms reacting atmospheric oxygen with ingested life-form material.
Occasional spectacular surface eclipses when large satellite barely
covers the star's disk.

"Its dominant social life-form recently started exploring neighbouring
planets with remote-controlled machines."

From a mech civilization optimized for space: Earth is located deep in
it's star's gravity well. It's a rocky world with large deep pools of
liquid hydrogen oxide covering the majority of the surface. Strong
gravitational field maintains a relatively dense atmosphere. Said
atmosphere is heavily contaminated with molecular oxygen (20%+)
generated by organic creatures operating under undesigned and random
evolution. Unsuitable to mech life, but accessible to remote probe. Care
must be taken on design, common lithium alloys may flame, and other
alloys will corrode rapidly.

Marc

Machines optimised for space - what are they using for power, by
the way? Nuclear fusion? Or radioactive batteries? Just wondering
which you'd choose. Evidently something not involving large
quantities of oxygen, which I guess is one big important part
of what holds /us/ back ;-)

Leafing through alt.sci.planetary, I read John Coxon's message of Tue, 2
Nov 2004:

There was a competition at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers to submit
your own entry for Earth using 250-ish words (it wasn't 250 but it was a
similar number).

"Dominant social life-form under strange delusion that their entry space
in this guide merits ten-fold expansion"

Why not have a look at that if they publish the entries?

Thanks to you (and Petter) for the reference.
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Leafing through alt.sci.planetary, I read Ben Bradley's message of Tue,
2 Nov 2004:

Peter Munn wrote:
Here's my shot for a
publication aimed at the scientifically-minded galactic tourist...
...
Occasional spectacular surface eclipses when large satellite barely
covers the star's disk.

Oh, no, there will be millions of aliens from everywhere
concentrated on the line of totality. I can see them crowding on the
land, and thousands of cruise ships forming a line in the ocean.

Yes, indeed! Perhaps we should leave it out of the guide entry after
all (I too, have suffered from crowding of flight space to get to
eclipse track regions, if not for standing space near the totality track
itself).

But, basically, it was the only major physical phenomenon that I could
think of, for which our Earth might be considered notable amongst
thousands of planets in nearby star systems.
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In article ,
says...
Marc 182 wrote in message t...
In article ,
says...
This is prompted by my recently being amongst (BBC) Radio 4's audience
for the latest adaptation of part of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy series.

The part about Earth's entry in the guide being expanded from one to two
words is, of course, wonderful in its simple statement of how our true
significance may be in the grand scheme of things. Not wanting to deny
that in any way, I nevertheless started to wonder what a slightly longer
item could say.

From a mech civilization optimized for space: Earth is located deep in
it's star's gravity well. It's a rocky world with large deep pools of
liquid hydrogen oxide covering the majority of the surface. Strong
gravitational field maintains a relatively dense atmosphere. Said
atmosphere is heavily contaminated with molecular oxygen (20%+)
generated by organic creatures operating under undesigned and random
evolution. Unsuitable to mech life, but accessible to remote probe. Care
must be taken on design, common lithium alloys may flame, and other
alloys will corrode rapidly.

Marc

Machines optimised for space - what are they using for power, by
the way? Nuclear fusion? Or radioactive batteries? Just wondering
which you'd choose. Evidently something not involving large
quantities of oxygen, which I guess is one big important part
of what holds /us/ back ;-)

Since they aren't acting under "undesigned and random evolution" I
expect they'd use whatever was convenient to the job at hand. They would
design a chassis optimized to the requirements, and then the AI would
occupy it. Out in the cold dark asteroid or comet belts a radioactive
power source would be good. Nearer into a star, solar collectors might
win out. On an asteroid large enough to be differentiated (like Vesta),
central geothermal generation plants with crawlers/diggers/whatevers
that returned regularly to recharge might work.

This doesn't differ much from how we design things, except that the
things are designing themselves.

Marc

Peter Munn wrote:
[...]
What might another culture see as significant about Earth, summing us up
^^^^^^^^^^^

This word is very important.

in a short entry that might equate to, say, just 50 English words?
Clearly, there can be no single "right" answer. Here's my shot for a
publication aimed at the scientifically-minded galactic tourist...


"Maturing rocky planet with cool water oceans. Impressive variety of
stationary life-forms harvesting radiated stellar energy and mobile
life-forms reacting atmospheric oxygen with ingested life-form material.

Um, no, this fits *most* planets in Adams' universe.

Occasional spectacular surface eclipses when large satellite barely
covers the star's disk.

A single large moon is also thought, by some, to be a
requirement for the development of higher life forms. So
while this is more specific to Earth than the first three
lines, it still isn't very specific after all.

Talk about *our* planet! Not about *any* Earth-like planet...

"Its dominant social life-form recently started exploring neighbouring
planets with remote-controlled machines."

It's not like this hasn't happened thousands of times
before, in the Milky Way galaxy of the Hitchiker's universe.
If not millions of times (especially given the fact that in
the first novel, Adams states that the diameter of the
galaxy is 500'000 light years, rather than 100'000 - that
means it'll contains a *lot* more stars than in our universe).

I'd be interested to see what other suggestions might be for a 50-word
alien run-down on our planet.

[Cross-posting includes uk.media.radio4 and alt.fan.douglas-adams as
this is Douglas Adams- and Radio 4- inspired, but I'm suggesting follow-
ups to alt.sci.planetary,rec.arts.sf.science,uk.sci.astro nomy only.]

I've set followup-to r.a.sf.science .

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Peter Knutsen wrote in message ...
Peter Munn wrote:
[...]
What might another culture see as significant about Earth, summing us up
^^^^^^^^^^^

This word is very important.

in a short entry that might equate to, say, just 50 English words?
Clearly, there can be no single "right" answer. Here's my shot for a
publication aimed at the scientifically-minded galactic tourist...


"Maturing rocky planet with cool water oceans. Impressive variety of
stationary life-forms harvesting radiated stellar energy and mobile
life-forms reacting atmospheric oxygen with ingested life-form material.

Um, no, this fits *most* planets in Adams' universe.

Those that haven't had Magratheans in, and aren't littered with
discarded time paradoxes and improbability pollution. Isn't
Ursa Minor supposed to be that way - it's always basically
Hollywood at cocktail time? "Have a nice diurnal anomaly."

I hesitate to call Earth "unspoilt", and of course there are
lots of planets that haven't joined interstellar society yet
(and some doomed never to do so), but by Galactic standards
we're probably pretty good environmentwise, and what pollution
and devastation and social misery we do have is probably seen
as ethnic, retro, quaint.

Occasional spectacular surface eclipses when large satellite barely
covers the star's disk.

A single large moon is also thought, by some, to be a
requirement for the development of higher life forms. So
while this is more specific to Earth than the first three
lines, it still isn't very specific after all.

Talk about *our* planet! Not about *any* Earth-like planet...

Well, we have only /one/ moon. How many planets do you know with
one moon? (Well, Mars, by and by. If those things even count
as moons.)

"Its dominant social life-form recently started exploring neighbouring
planets with remote-controlled machines."

It's not like this hasn't happened thousands of times
before, in the Milky Way galaxy of the Hitchiker's universe.
If not millions of times (especially given the fact that in
the first novel, Adams states that the diameter of the
galaxy is 500'000 light years, rather than 100'000 - that
means it'll contains a *lot* more stars than in our universe).

I think a recent re-read of _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
touched on a huge horrible convulsive Galactic war twenty billion
years ago, either the one with the white robots or the one with
a bunch of warmongering aliens who briefly tried taking out their
aggression on sacks of potatoes instead, but maybe that was
million after all.

I'd be interested to see what other suggestions might be for a 50-word
alien run-down on our planet.

[Cross-posting includes uk.media.radio4 and alt.fan.douglas-adams as
this is Douglas Adams- and Radio 4- inspired, but I'm suggesting follow-
ups to alt.sci.planetary,rec.arts.sf.science,uk.sci.astro nomy only.]

I've set followup-to r.a.sf.science .

Certainly an encyclopaedia entry should describe what is
distinctive about us, including I guess anything that applies
only to a sufficiently small proportion of planets and cultures
not to be assumed by default - say something we've got that only
eighty per cent of planets have. But we don't know what that _is_
- except maybe that the planet /does/ have (i) life (ii) animate
(iii) multicellular (iv) intelligent. Even in our worst nightmare,
that's got to be a _little_ bit special. Plus we've industrialised,
quite recently. It took us long enough, so amongst inhabited planets
there should be plenty who didn't get there yet. And we don't know
how long industrial civilisations survive after, say, the discovery
of the Higgs boson.

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, Peter Munn
asked:
The part about Earth's entry in the guide being expanded from one to two
words is, [...] I nevertheless started to wonder what a slightly longer
item could say.
What might another culture see as significant about Earth, summing
us up in [...] say, just 50 English words? [...]

I've had to use a lot more than 50 words, but I'm describing the
planet, its biology, and its dominant species. Presumably an alien
entry would use extensive shorthand (Trek's "Class M planet," James
White's "Sector General" biological classification, Niven's...
whatsit?... Tavern).

Third planet "Earth" of G2-type star "Sol". Diameter... Mass... Axial
tilt... Rotation... Insolation... Atmospheric composition...
Temperature... Surface topography range... 75% covered by liquid
water, XX% by water ice (polar caps and glaciers). Single major
satellite "Luna"... Biochemistry: DNA, levo-protein, lipid,
dextro-sugars. Evolution in progress for ~4e9 yrs. Lifeform sizes
(~1e-6..~1e+1) m, standard power law population distribution. One
unambiguous current sophont (spoken and written language, tool use,
local space travel) "human", ~10 borderline cases. Human: mammalian,
biped, bimanual, binocular (4e-9..7e-9 nm), binaural (2e1..2e4 Hz),
diurnal, individuistic; ~2e2 m, ~1e2 kg; lifespan ~1e1 y, react 1e-1
to 1e4 s; population ~6e9 and growing. Human tech development: fire
~1e5 y, metals ~1e4 y, plastics ~1e2 y, nanostructuring ~1e1 y,
computing ~5e1 y. Noticeable effects on planetary environment
(landscaping, gas emissions, thermal output) ~1e2 y.

(Adjust all measurement units to suit.)

The original HHGG's "mostly harmless" philosophy can be expanded to
"how might they threaten us (biology, technology, mindset), and on
what time scale?"

Time scale covers both "speed of technological development" and "how
fast do they individually react?" That's the "1e-1 to 1e4 s" note:
1/10 second is about our limit of temporal resolution, and it's
difficult to concentrate on a single task for more than an hour.

Characteristic length and mass scales: to avoid the "but due to a
gross miscalculation of scale, the entire battlefleet was swallowed by
a small dog" problem. Planetary specs and atmospheric content: to
prevent vampires and sodium-based aliens from spontaneously bursting
info flame upon debarkation. Frequency range of communication: to
tune translators appropriately.

A much expanded entry would be necessary for a "So You've Just Arrived
From A Parallel Universe" guidebook: lots of cultural information.
(The concept is raised in the fanfic series "Undocumented Features,"
which features an unseemly number of such arrivals, most of whom
conveniently read and speak English.)

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