Decipher SciFi

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Natural Sciences
**Decipher SciFi**

Decipher SciFi explores the how and why in science fiction with conversations about technology, humanity, and the future. This is not a review show, nor will you see much criticism or snark. It is a rationally optimistic look, through film, at where society and technology are and where they are headed. Also, butts.

Latest Episodes:

Oasis (pilot): ponics, the vastness of space, and breathable atmospheres May 02, 2017

Show notes

Amazon Pilot Model

Amazon’s practice of putting out a pile of different pilots and letting the cream rise via actual user data.

London 2032

Environmental collapse. Precipitous economic drop, at least locally. Population collapse maybe?

Space is big

The Oasis settlement is on “the edge of the galaxy.” That’s really far! Nearest edge to Earth still thousands of lightyears. So, magic FTL. Stasis and muscle-wasting. FTL comms may be couriered by the ships.

Preacher man

The role of a man of God on a space station where resources are scarce and engineers are in high demand.

The Oasis Settlement

Not as advertised! We’re still in the early stages of building Elysium here; it’s still being settled. Gravity and weather systems and water. Tectonic activity and proximity to other bodies. Breathable atmospheres and how they get there.

One-way trips

Expense and complexity of designing for return trips in space travel. The nature of the magic FTL seems to still need normal rocket launches to get up there. Processing passenger vessels for materials.

*Ponics

Hydroponics. Aeroponics. Lower energy and water requirements, fine control of variables. Haley Joel is our Mark Watney botanist.

Space Dementia

Ala Armageddon? Mundane explanations, Occam’s Razor, and magnets. Or supernatural. We’ll see!

Magnets. How do they work?

Please see the Veritasium and Minute Physics videos above. This has little (nothing) to do with Oasis, really, but it’s a cool thing we wanted to share. :)

Predictions

What could be going on on this world and what we expect to actually happen. Solaris!

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The Prestige: magic as skeptical training, Tesla, and taming electricity Apr 25, 2017

Show notes

This movie is so good!

Just a warning: we really think you should watch this before listening to the episode. It’s so good!

Magic as skeptical training

Taking advantage of human intuition. Taking advantage of our sensory aparatus. Inoculating against credulity and being fooled.

Penn & Teller

Excellent showmen who have been at it forever and who are just great. They are “honest liars” and a lot of their media is great training in cognitive biases.

Saving people from drowning

Attempts to derive scientific guidelines for chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save drowning victims might go back further than you’d expect.

Tesla

David Bowie as the perfect dandy to play the rather dandy-ish Tesla.

Modern railguns might be in a similar vein to Tesla’s “Death Ray”

Taming electricity

The wonderment of the period. Misconceptions about the rivalry between Tesla and Edison.

Dedication and obsession and sacrifice

The difference between simple and easy. Going over the top to solve a problem with technology where it isn’t necessary.

The Prestige - Hiding in Plain Sight by nerdwriter: YouTube
The Trouble with Teleporters by CGP Grey: YouTube

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Ghost in the Shell: modern cyberpunk, biorobots, and the nature of self w/ Jolene Creighton Apr 18, 2017

Show notes

Future City

Where is this movie taking place? Was it made explicit? We’re thinking neo-Tokyo but what’s really interesting is the lengths they went to in order to make New Zealand look like a retro-futuristic Asian city.

Cyberpunk

Roots in Neuromancer etc. The rising Asian power of the period (Japan) and the mixing of western and eastern aesthetics.

Robots!

And robot materials. Robot doctors. Metamaterials. Biorobots and cyborgs. Metal vs biomech. Blending in. Squishiness.

Robot eyes

Networked AR lens implants. Batou had a whole suite of EM filters! Thermal, night vision, and x-ray. X-ray! Otherwise known as “cancer mode.” How x-rays work and the danger he must posing to everyone around him.

Invisibility Cloaks

Harry potter and Predator. First Predator vision, now predator invisisuit! Bending different frequencies of light around objects cloaked with metamaterials.

Memory and Self

Memory “glitch” medication. Implanting learning. Wiping memories and adapting brains to new bodies.

Man vs Machine

The potential foreignness of artificial intelligence. The human brain as a meaning-making machine. Melding with the machines.

Nature of Self

And dualism and the great questions raised in the original film.

Ghost in the Shell (the real one!): iTunes Amazon
Ghost in the Shell: scifi anime, computer evolution, and cybernetics: Decipher SciFi
Measure of a Man - Star Trek TNG: iTunes Amazon

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I Am Legend: zompires, fuel spoilage in the apocalypse, and loneliness w/ Nick Farmer Apr 11, 2017

Show notes

A book and so many adaptations

I Am Legend (the book) (1954), The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), I Am Legend (2007), I Am Omega (2007). This one (if you consider the alternative, better ending) might be the closest to getting the point of the book.

Zompires

Zombies vs vampires and the origin of this story in the pre-zombie era. The book inspired Night of the Living Dead!

Using viruses to our advantage

Viruses as workhorses to deliver medical payloads. Mutations, good and bad. Telomeres. Cancer, and the difficulties of biological immortality.

Loneliness

The post-apocalypse can be rough; it’s difficult for social creatures. Talking to dogs and mannequins. Videos by

Zompire biology

What we observe presumably as the effects of their disease:

Superquick respiration
UV burns them to death
Hairless
Translucent skin
Unhinged jaws
Aggression
Averbal
Strong bones and muscle

Zompires vs Undead

The twist being that Will Smith is the real monster! Depending on which ending you see.

Endings

The “alternative” was so much better. Who is the real monster? The meaning behind the phrase “I Am Legend” and how it is mostly lost in the films.

The Survivors by Nick Farmer: Amazon
The Expanse: iTunes Amazon
Mind Field Episode 1 - Isolation: YouTube

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Life: time in space, ISS safety, and literal firewalls Apr 04, 2017

Show notes

The International Space Station

Crew of six. Highly trained to do space stuff and… study aliens? Crazy crane-arms.

Is this the future?

Near-future? Referencing the challenger explosion. A survey of the evidence and the answer: basically this must be taking place now. World population: 8 billion!

Origins of alien life

Looked rather similar to life on our own planet. Common origins. Panspermia. Or is life typical in the universe, and life as we understand it is a somewhat typical example?

Time in space

In the movie Jake Gyllenhaal claims 473 days in space. That’s a lot! NASA Twin study.

This alien

Wow what a bastard this alien is. “Just trying to survive.” Pluripotency and cell specialization. A brain made of muscles. “A giant piece of murder muscle.” A jet plane made of biceps. One cell

Kill it with fire!

Literal firewalls. Temperatures of incinerators. Could we burn it up by tossing it down into the atmosphere (hot!).

Kill it with space!

Give that alien some space. Aliens love space.

Plan B: Screw it! Push it and they and everything into space! But is the math in the ballpark of reasonable? Escape velocities from earth’s surface vs the ISS.

Alien: iTunes Amazon
What if... orbital speed?: What If

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Armageddon: explosions, impactor tracking, and density of the asteroid belt w/ Daniel James Barker Mar 28, 2017

Show notes

💥explosion noises💥

Michael Bay blows things up. Layers of subtlety.

BIG AS TEXAS

Just how very very large and unavoidably catastrophic the impactor in this movie is. Size vs Deep Impact. Size vs the dinosaur impactor.

Visibility of this asteroid in the sky

Angular size of this asteroid. Calculations from size, speed and distance suggested in the film (14 arcseconds). Using Ceres as a baseline for figuring out how bright this asteroid would be in our sky.

Tracking potential impactors

We do this irl! It helps when they’re on our solar plane. Comets can come in all sideways, which can make thing difficult. But we do okay tracking a lot of those too. Apophis.

Asteroid belts etc

Common misconceptions about the density of objects in the belt. It’s really diffuse in general! You won’t need to fly your shuttle like a jet in not-asmosphere.

Things hit earth

Lots of past impactors. Micrometeorites. Modern impacts like Chelyabinsk or Tunguska. Russia is basically a meteor magnet.

Astronauts

Drilling and art vs science. Astronaut training and why it’s not that big a deal and you can pretty much skip most of it and hop on an asteroid. 😎

Misc Physics

Nonsensical simulated gravity. Slingshot maneuvers. Steeling energy from moons and planets.

Deep Impact: citizen scientists, extinction events, and avoidance: Decipher SciFi
Phil Plait's Review of Armageddon: Bad Astronomer
Uncertainty Principle the Podcast: Uncertainty Principle

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Hidden Figures: the real women and some NACA/NASA history w/ Joe Ruppel Mar 21, 2017

Show notes

On voices

My guest appearance talking about this film on the podcast Voices From L5.

The women!

The movie mostly follows three incredible women in particular.

NACA/NASA

This got left out of the movie, but the history of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), then NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), is an important part of the story.

Space Race

Existential threats. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines obviating much of the interest in basing nuclear weapons in space. Dangerous beeps and boops.

Humans in Space

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Alan Shepard. National and global heroes.

Space stuff is dangerous

Flight testing is really unsafe. Redstone rockets.

Space Competition

National competition in the day, feels to us more healthy and global-cooperative these days. For now. Until it gets cheaper and there are resources to fight over. :(

Computers, human and otherwise

Human computers. Adding machines. Early programmable computers. (Justified) trust issues with these new machines. IBM 7090. Fortran.

John Glenn

Joe’s favorite superhero. A totally amazing list of accomplishments even before the Mercury program. And then the only person to ride in both the Mercury and Shuttle programs.

Hats off

Appreciation for the people who pulled all of this stuff off, with special consideration for the women featured in the film.

Hidden Figures (the book) by Margot Lee Shetterly: iTunes Amazon
From the Earth to the Moon: Amazon
Apollo 13: iTunes Amazon

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Q&A: damning moral intuitions Mar 14, 2017

Show notes

Q&A #1

What: Our first Q&A episode! Wherein we answer the MOST INTERESTING QUESTIONS FROM THE INTERNET!

“What would you do for immortality?” (Question from CF Villion on Twitter)

Trolley problems. Types of immortality, especially “virtual” immortality. Consciousness uploading.

“#SciFi #Space: what would happen if a #BlackHole showed up in our #SolarSystem?” (Question from Maxime Duprez on Twitter)

Rogue black holes. Passing through the Kuiper belt. Or passing through the asteroid belt. The myriad ways in which this would totally mess up our solar system and probably kill us all.

“In SciFi movies we are Earthlings but what about galaxy VS galaxy stuff. What would we be called? Cuz I’m not down with being called Milkies” (Question from Michael on Twitter)

Earth-centric point-of-view. Milkies? Maybe the aliens can call us “milksopp.” Don’t forget there could be many many other intelligent species amongst the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, though.

“What would an orbital battle be like?” (Question from John Freeman on Twitter)

Messy. Defining what we mean by orbital. Flotsam and jetsam. Yet more references to Seveneves. Kinetic weaponry and orbital bombardment.

Zap Brannigan style “What would you do if you met yourself? Would be disappointed or in awe?” (Question by Nick Temple on Twitter)

Not liking oneself from the outside. Antisocial magnets of the same polarity.

“If you could have any creature as a pet from SciFi, what would it be?” (Question by Cameron on Twitter)

Ethical implications with trying to take in a creature of unknown intelligence as a pet. Bad pets: Dune sandworms,

“Why Hasn’t Some Disaster Destroyed The Earth?” (Question by MysticInvestigations on Twitter)

Impactors. Protections offered by our moon, Jupiter, and other bodies in our solar system. The formation of our moon, with accretion disks and whatnot.

“Which Newspeak word do you like most? Why?” (Question by David Rozansky)

Doubleplus good.

“Watching Arrival. Why do artsy scifi movies have abstract expressionist art aliens? I mean sure, avoid lil green men, but featureless?” (Question by vgr on Twitter)

We worked a lot out about the aliens from arrival in our two episodes. Alien morphology. More anthropocentrism. Invisible (to us) differentiating markings. Here’s a whole blog dedicated to seeing through the eyes of other creatures in their own areas of the spectrum: Photography of the Invisible World.

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The Space Between Us: lightspeed commuunications and relative gravity w/ Chris Noessel Mar 07, 2017

Show notes

How we wound up covering this teen romance

Chris was in town and at the last minute, we called together a Decipher SciFi meetup in NYC. Thanks for coming out, folks!

Settling Mars

Long and short term threats to humanity. Anthropocene. Courage and adventure and inspiration.

Astronaut Quarantine

Frank Borman and space vomit and space diarrhea. Pre-flight and post-flight quarantine protocols.

Mars mission design

Rocket to orbit, dock with the larger ship/station, then on to Mars. Not entirely dissimilar to irl concepts. Finding energy on other bodies in space with lesser gravity wells. Public and private space industry partnership.

Timelines and propulsion

Around nine months to mars (maybe). Ion drives? Mundane solid rocket? Apparent weightlessness?

Robots

Remote Agent architecture. Robots prefabricating a Mars base before the humans arrive.

Weightlessness

Weightlessness as an environmental “stressor.” Insemination in space. Fetal and childhood physical development.

Video Chat

Light speed communication speed limitations. Using AI to simulate realtime conversation. Translucent screens! ? A terrible design for the user, but a good design for storytelling in film. Also of some utility to teachers, who can then see what students are looking at. Parallax.

The hardship of existing on earth

What would a native-born Martian human experience coming to Earth? Higher gravity. Heart enlargement. Blood pressure. Thin bones, low muscle mass.

Make it So by Chris Noessel: iTunes Amazon

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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: history vs myth, and time travel w/ Brandon Rollins Feb 28, 2017

Show notes

Mismatching of Person and Myth

Flawed characters in history. Remembering to recognize that the characters we imagine may not be as close as we think to the real thing.

Napoleon

A short dead dude, but also irl an imposing figure. And not actually short! Of totally average height - the shortness thing was actually an ex post facto error in conversion from the units of measurement of his time and place.

Socrates

Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle. The Hemlock treatment vs living in the future. Socratic ignorance: “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Bill and Ted’s rolled high on wisdom, low on intelligence. :)

Beethoven

Gradual deafness. Bill & Ted picked him up in 1810, four years before he was reported to have gone completely deaf. So he may have had some limited ability to hear. Piano on the floor, stylus in the mouth, and other coping mechanisms. Beethoven’s metronome. OR MAYBE, he was actually just a crazy old smelly deaf guy and that’s why mall security had to come drag him away.

King Henry VII

They visit his castle in 15th century England and meet two totally bodacious babes. Or something. Attention to linguistic detail in the film: everybody speaks the correct languages! More or less. 15th century English. Chaucerean and Shakespearean pronunciation.

The Princess Situation

Can they read? Write? Reading and writing as two separate skills. Credit cards. Introducing medieval princesses to fiat currency and a debt-based economy.

Genghis Khan

Dan Carlin said all of it better than we ever could: Wrath of the Khans.

Time Travel

Causal loops. Bootstrap and grandfather paradoxes. Dr Who on the bootstrap paradox. “Time circuits.”