April 2016 - discoverscifi.com

The Brink of a New Age of Discovery

April 29, 2016/0 Comments/in science and books, Books, Insider, Uncategorized /by Matthew Mather

Do you remember those old posters from the 1950's that had people in flying cars and robots doing the dishes? It must have been an exciting time. Test pilots had just broken the sound barrier, followed by a breathless rush into the dawn of the Space Race that led to the moon landings just 66 years after the first time Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first airplane. At that time, nuclear power seemed ready to offer limitless cheap energy, and the boom of microelectronics was just beginning to dazzle.

What happened to my flying car? While it's true that electronics have gotten smaller and faster beyond the wildest of imaginings of 40 years ago, it's also true that the 747 airliner first flew in 1969, and that's probably the same plane you'd take to fly today. Same speed, same altitude–the 747 was an amazing feat in the 60's, but by now we were supposed to be vacationing in the vast donut space stations of Arthur C. Clark's 2001. And speaking of 1969, that was 47 years ago…if we went from the first airplane to the moon in just sixty years, fifty years after that shouldn't we be taking warp-drive spaceships to Betelgeuse? What happened?

For instance, what about dark matter? This is the stuff that makes up about 90% of the mass/energy of our universe, but so far physicists have only been able to narrow it down to (a) massive subatomic particles that we're literally swimming in although have never detected, or (b) primordial black holes that invisibly glue together galaxies. So 90% of everything is either something subatomic or something unimaginably massive and large. That's a pretty big gap for something rather important.

Or how about eels? If you live in North America or Europe, you've most likely encountered an eel in your local river. Yet all North American and European eels originate from a single source, the mysterious “Sargasso Sea” somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean where eels spawn each year and migrate outward. Despite knowing this *has* to exist, not one person has ever witnessed a spawning eel, or found the location of the Sargasso Sea that has to exist.

Two obvious things that have to exist, and yet we've never seen them. I believe this is called faith. So keep the faith, my friends, because our future is fast approaching.

Just a few years ago, I remember feeling depressed when NASA made tired-sounding announcements of sending humans to Mars in thirty or forty years. Ho-hum, ho-hum. And then this week, SpaceX makes a surprise announcement saying they plan to send an unmanned Red Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018 (TWO years from now, not twenty), and in September of this year will they will release serious plans for colonizing Mars. Holy Buck Rogers! And this comes just a few weeks after they butt-landed a rocket on a floating drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Does this sound like something from a science fiction book? Cause it's not. This is happening, folks, not to mention the slew of other private space enterprises going on.

In other news, big corporations are now creating their own endemic artificial intelligences–witness Siri from Apple, Alexa from Amazon, Cortana from Microsoft, and reports of just about every major hedge fund in Connecticut starting up their own AIs to run their core businesses. It's not quite the android Replicants of Mr. Philip K. Dick, but it's more than halfway to HAL of 2001…and pair this up with the walking robots from Boston Dynamics. And speaking of AI disasters, when Microsoft recently unleashed Tay–Cortana's AI cousin–free and unfettered into the world a few weeks ago, within hours she became a Hitler-loving racist asshole, which I feel perhaps doesn't bode well for humankind over the long term (bear fealty now to our robot-AI overlords before it's too late).

But this isn't the big news. No. The big news, I think, is that we're on the brink of TOE–and by that I mean the Theory Of Everything. Without getting stuck in the details, for the last forty or so years, we've been stuck with quantum-electrodynamics theory on one side (the merger of quantum, electromagnetics, and strong and weak nuclear force theories) and gravity-relativity on other, and never the twain shall meet. Nobody has been able to devise one coherent physical model of our universe that includes the four fundamental forces together with quantum theory–but I think scientists are on the brink of a breakthrough (witness the discover of a new, previously unsuspected particle by the LHC) that may create a new fundamental picture of reality.

Esoteric?

How can this possibly affect us?

Perhaps.

But “quantum theory” only really emerged in 1924 as a discipline unto itself with Heisenberg and Schrodinger (it did exist as bits and pieces in the 1800's, but only hints of something unconnected), and at the time, sitting on a steamship deck and sipping your coffee, you might have been excused from wondering what possible application it could have. Fast-forward sixty years, and it fueled the technical underpinning of the electronics boom that has birthed the Internet, AIs, and worldwide instantaneous communication networks.

What could a new theory of the ultimate nature of reality make possible? I have no idea, but I'll bet you that in fifty years it will be something amazing that we can't even imagine now. Tired old NASA is even funding a serious research project into faster-than-light travel–the idea isn't to really travel faster than light, but to bend space (and thus time) to punch holes through it. The physics say it's possible, but the energies required are either vaster than a hundred suns, or not much at all–what's needed is an understanding of the real physics behind the ultimate nature of our reality, and our lab-coated friends may just be on the edge of supplying it. So dust off your Mars suit, boot up your personal AI, and step onto that warp-drive spaceship, because the future is fast approaching.

But I doubt we'll ever find out where eels come from.

Adventures in Hybrid Publishing

April 23, 2016/0 Comments/in Books, Insider /by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The changes that have occurred in publishing over the past decade are pretty remarkable. I first wrote this post for Simon and Schuster about a year ago, and even more has changed in publishing in that time.

Authors are no longer restricted by the old rules of publishing. You don’t need a literary agent or a traditional publishing deal to get your story into reader’s hands. E-readers have helped fuel a revolution, where an unknown author like Hugh Howey can become a New York Times Bestseller almost overnight. From Wattpad to Amazon, publishing has never been easier. But that doesn’t mean one method is better than the other. It simply means that authors and publishers have more options.

Three years ago, when I was still a purely self-published author, New York Times bestselling author Bob Mayer told me that hybrid publishing was the future. At the time, I didn’t even know what that meant. But, that’s exactly what I became; by mixing and matching the strategies that worked best for me, I became a hybrid author. Two years later, with a series traditionally published under Simon451 (a digital-first imprint of Simon & Schuster) another series I’m self-publishing, and a third acquired by Blackstone Publishing, I found the right balance of freedom and control to survive as a full time writer.

My publishing story started about four years ago. I had an unpublished manuscript that I’d been working on for years. I thought about querying agents or sending the book to a small press but after some consideration I decided to go with what seemed like the least painful method — I decided to self-publish.

This was one of the most important moments of my career. It opened a door to the world of self-publishing and while that novel didn’t do all that well, it paved the way for my next book, Orbs. Using the marketing knowledge I’d gained from my first novel and the advice of fellow self-published authors, I was able to successfully launch my second book. Two months later, Orbs was a breakaway hit on Amazon and a number one bestseller that attracted the attention of several publishers including Simon451.

Now I was faced with an important dilemma. I wrestled with whether to continue to self-publish or make the leap to traditional publishing. It wasn’t until I asked myself an important question that I found my answer — what could Simon451 bring to the table that I wasn’t doing for myself?

Sure, self-publishing allowed me the freedom of getting my stories out quickly. I had control over the marketing and price. But there were still obstacles preventing me from reaching the audience outside of Amazon. I thought a traditional publisher could help tear down those walls and help me reach those readers. But in addition to that, with professional editing and copyediting I would be able to improve my technical skills as a writer.

For that reason I decided to sign with Simon451. I knew that with the power of their editing and marketing teams my books could potentially reach an entire new level. My writing would improve and my books would reach more readers. Simon451 did just that. They put my Orbs series on every major e-reader platform, and their superb editing team has made me a stronger writer. Starting in July of 2016, the books are coming out in paperback.

After signing with Simon451 I came to see the other side of publishing. My old editor calls the e-book revolution the Wild West. More publishing options means more authors. That also means more competition. In order to survive in this environment I knew I needed to adapt. I needed a flexible model that would allow me the freedom to get books out faster while having the support of a major publisher on other titles.

That’s why I returned to my roots after I completed the Orbs series by self-publishing the Extinction Cycle series. All five books are number one bestsellers on Amazon and the audiobooks are too, with Extinction Horizon hitting #1 in the audible store in 2015. This new series has allowed me the ability to self-publish every four or five months. In a little over a year, the series has sold over two hundred thousand copies.

While writing the Extinction Cycle series I was also writing a new trilogy called Hell Divers. With the success of the Extinction Cycle, my agent was able to sell Hell Divers to another traditional publisher, Blackstone, the same company that published the Extinction Cycle audiobooks.

I get questions all the time about how to survive as an author in the constantly changing world of publishing. My answer is to go hybrid, if you have that opportunity. By keeping one foot in the self-publishing sphere, I’m able to maintain the breakneck pace necessary to compete with other eBook authors, and by keeping the other foot in traditional publishing, I’m able to work on slower-burn projects that might need extra attention like Hell Divers.

My ultimate goal is the same as most authors: to have my books in print and on bookshelves. There isn’t anything I can think of that’s much better in life than holding my book in paperback. But the path to print publication requires skills learned in both worlds, the skills I learned as a hybrid author. Now that is happening with both Orbs and Hell Divers.

Publishing is continuing to evolve every day, providing endless possibilities for authors to bring their stories to life. Ultimately, I believe Bob Mayer is right. Hybrid publishing is the future for many. It may seem unconventional right now, but with the ever-changing landscape of publishing authors will be required to adapt in order to achieve their goals, just like I have.

Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Nicholas Sansbury Smith is the bestselling author of the Orbs and Extinction Cycle series. He worked for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in disaster mitigation before switching careers to focus on his one true passion–writing. A three-time Kindle All-Star, several of Smith's titles have reached the top 50 on the overall Kindle bestseller list and as high as #1 in the Audible store. Hell Divers, the first book in his new trilogy, will release in July 2016. When he isn't writing or daydreaming about the apocalypse, he's training for triathlons or traveling the world. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his dog and a house full of books.

If you'd like to hear more about Nick's books, you can join his spam free mailing list here: eepurl.com/bggNg9

Telepathy – From Science Fiction to Reality

April 16, 2016/0 Comments/in Samuel Peralta, science and books, Books, Insider /by Samuel Peralta

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

During the Golden Age of science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction was a vanguard in popularizing stories that centered on humans with enhanced mental abilities, and how ordinary society might look at people with those abilities, notably with A.E. van Vogt’s serialized novel Slan and the similarly themed stories that collectively made up Henry Kuttner’s Mutant.

Indeed, the first Hugo Award was given in 1953 to a novel that revolved around telepaths. The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a police procedural science fiction story set in a world where telepathy has become commonplace, although so-called espers have varying degrees of ability.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

That this work has become a landmark in the genre is evidenced by nods to his work, as in the television series Babylon 5, where the author lends his name to one of the primary protagonists, Psi Corps officer Alfred Bester, played by the iconic Walter Koenig from Star Trek (whose Vulcans were also able to mind-meld, to share thoughts, memories, and knowledge with others through physical contact).

Today this melding of minds, this staple of science fiction, is coming closer to reality than many of us may realize.

In his book The Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku, noted futurist and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York, classifies three types of impossibilities. Class III impossibilities are what we normally think of as not possible: things that cannot become real, at least not according to our current understanding of science; these include perpetual motion and precognition. Class II impossibilities include things that may be realizable, but in the far future, such as faster-than-light travel.

According to Professor Kaku, telepathy is a Class I impossibility. These are phenomena that don’t violate the known laws of physics, and indeed may become reality in the next century.

A meeting of minds

Never mind the next century—some scientists believe the age of telepathy may be upon us.

The first clue? That people lacking one or more of the normal five senses can now, in certain situations, be given them.

Since the 1960s, around 350,000 people who were profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing have been fitted with cochlear implants, providing them with a sense of sound where previously there was none. Essentially, a microphone picks up sounds, which are filtered by a speech processor and sent as an electronically coded signal to a transmitter behind the ear. This transmitter sends the signal to the subject’s brain through an array of up to twenty-two electrodes circling the cochlea, which then send the impulses through the auditory nerve system to the brain.

Following European approval in 2011, the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2013 approved for use the first retinal implant. The system uses a video processing unit to transform images from a miniature video camera into electronic data, which is then wirelessly transmitted to a sixty-electrode retinal prosthesis implanted in the eye, replacing the function of degenerated cells in the retina. Although vision isn’t fully restored, the system allows those affected with age-related macular degeneration, or with retinitis pigmentosa—a condition which damages the light-sensitive cells lining the retina—to better perceive images and movement.

Retinal implant

Similar advances are being reported for the other three senses of touch, smell, and taste.

But what about the sixth sense?

In my own speculative fiction universe, electronically augmented telepaths make use of technologies akin to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to associate perceived images of neural activity with a subject’s memory palace in his brain. This is a key point for my conception of the protagonist of my short story Trauma Room, a man who can use augmented telepathy to traverse a subject’s thoughts and memories using the method of loci.

Trauma Room by Samuel Peralta

Today, functional MRI has actually been used to sense words being thought by a subject, or to discern the images being formed in the brain as a subject watches a movie. It’s still very mechanical, matching monitored brainwave activity with a huge database of impulse responses to benchmark words or images, but it’s the same big numbers principle that enabled the IBM Deep Blue chess computer to win against then-World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

In the same year that The Demolished Man was published, Theodore Sturgeon‘s More Than Human also came out. It’s the story of several people with extraordinary abilities who are able blend their abilities together and achieve human transcendence. The same theme—of humans transcending ordinary humankind—is explored in Time is the Simplest Thing, by Clifford D. Simak. It can be argued that a similar sort of communal experience—if not transcendence—is already part of our experience, with the spread of the Social Web.

It’s only a matter of time before all the input and output devices we have—keyboards, flat screens, heads-up displays—become obsolete. Why should you have to type or dictate information into a computer, when you can control it directly by thought? Why project information onto your eyes when you could send information directly into the brain? In time, many of us may be direct input/output nodes into the cloud.

Science fiction?

Direct brain interfacing

We live in a world where cochlear implants are already helping the deaf to hear, and retinal implants are beginning to help the blind to see.

We live in a world where smartphones and connected wearable devices—watches, glasses, health and fitness monitors—simultaneously receive and broadcast information to and about us through the cloud of the Internet.

We live in a world where deep brain stimulation is routinely used in therapies to address Parkinson’s disease, where implants in the brain allow people to bypass a broken spinal cord and move hands, arms, limbs with the power of thought.

Augmented reality heads-up display

In fact, we live in a world where real telepathy has already been achieved. A team at Duke University in North Carolina has, for the first time, demonstrated a direct communication interface between two brains. In the Duke experiments, two thirsty rats are placed into separate cages. They cannot see or hear each other, but their brains are wired together via electrode implants in their motor cortices. Each rat will be rewarded with a sip of water if it pushes the correct one of two levers. In the first rat’s cage, a light comes on above the correct lever to let the rat know which lever to push—but there is no such indicator in the second rat’s cage.

The experiment, then, measures whether, when the first rat pushes the correct lever, it sends a brain-initiated signal to the second rat, which must then correctly interpret the signal it experiences in its own brain, and push the correct lever.

The technology is simple: implanted electrodes capture the signals from the firing of the neurons in the motor cortex, translate them into binary code, and sends the signal—via a wire, wirelessly, or via the Internet to another location—into the electrodes in the other brain, which translates it back into neural signals.

Sheer chance would have the second rat pushing the correct lever 50% of the time. In fact, the rat chose the correct lever between 60% and 85% of the time. This was true even when one animal was in North Carolina and the other was in Brazil.

How much longer before what you read in the following pages is no longer science fiction?

The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku

In The Future of the Mind, Professor Kaku notes, “We have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the mind, once considered out of reach, is finally assuming center stage.”

Science fiction writers peer into possible futures, using a literary form of precognition, as it were. And so we follow that grand tradition, celebrating this a new Silver Age of fiction, an age of online publishing and digital books, an age where we are surrounded by wonderment and wonders, where science, in many ways, has become magical.

SAMUEL PERALTA is a physicist and storyteller. An Amazon bestselling author, he is also the creator and driving force behind the Future Chronicles series of speculative fiction anthologies, with 14 consecutive titles ranking at the top of the Amazon SF Bestseller lists, several hitting the overall Amazon Top 10 Bestsellers list. His own work has been recognized in Best American Science Fiction and included in the author community anthology for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer.

Samuel Peralta, creator of The Future Chronicles

This article was first published, in slightly different form, as the Foreword to The Telepath Chronicles

Various_TELEPATH_CHRONICLES_EbookEdition-320x512

The Telepath Chronicles – part of The Future Chronicles anthology series

Artificial Intelligence: A Pragmatic and Ethical Dilemma

April 9, 2016/0 Comments/in science and books, Insider /by Joshua Dalzelle

“Alexa, stop!!”

This is shouted by me at least a dozen times a day when my digital friend goes completely off the rails when given a seemingly simple request. It also got me thinking about how far we’ve come in the quest for artificial intelligence and, in moments like this, how far we still have to go.

I’ll preface this by stating that I’m not a software or computer engineer. My degrees are in aeronautics and electronics, so this discussion will necessarily be more abstract than technical. Think of it as more of a fun intellectual exercise than a serious dissertation on the subject, a writing prompt, if you will.

Artificial intelligence, true AI, has been a staple of science fiction since the 1800’s, over a century before the first true computer. In the 1872 novel, Erewhon, Samuel Butler included three chapters that comprised The Book of the Machines, a number of articles that addressed the possibility that machines might develop consciousness through Darwinian Selection. While dismissed and ridiculed at the time, Butler’s story was a cautionary tale of what could happen should a type of sentient machine arise.

Since The Book of the Machines, science fiction has sought to address what a future might be like when humanity lives with intelligent machines. These works, both literary and cinematic, tend to fall within the two broad categories of utopic and dystopic. Some depict a world in which machines and humans live in harmony and as equals, others tell us of a world in which our creations turn on us and supplant us as the masters of our planet. So whose version will prove to be more accurate?

If we accept that a sentient intelligence might occur through a type of natural selection, as Butler first suggested, it will have come about through the brutal process of evolution and the idiom, survival of the fittest, may end up being more than just a clever expression. An intelligence created spontaneously via a random set of favorable conditions could very well consider humanity an imminent threat and take appropriate measures, especially in its infancy. Given the increasing amount of networked automation in the infrastructure we depend on for survival that scenario could quickly morph from an idle curiosity to a grave threat.

On the brighter side, what if the first AI machines were the result of careful intent and built with specific purpose? Science fiction is loaded with beloved androids and robots, each with their own personalities and noble motivations. These characters are usually highly anthropomorphic, both in appearance and demeanor, and typically aren’t distinguishable from their human counterparts until the author provides a physical description. I find nothing inherently wrong with this hopeful outlook of what intelligent machines could be like and even have one that is a favorite character in my adventure scifi series. That being said, I also feel this is the least likely scenario for a few reasons.

As I yell at Alexa one more time, trying to get her to change the song that’s currently playing to the one I actually meant I’m awed at what’s now commercially available and sold today under the misleading label of AI. Alexa is a very convincing simulation of a petulant five year old who refuses to just do what she’s asked or (I’m convinced) deliberately misunderstands me. Despite the fact I call the device by a name and interact conversationally, at no time am I not cognizant of the fact that Alexa—impressive though she may be—is nothing more than a set of predetermined responses and clever programming.

You may also remember Microsoft’s recent (and tragically misguided) “Tay.” The Twitter chatbot was a much-publicized experiment that was said to learn and adapt the more it interacted with users on the social media platform. Within the span of twenty-four hours Tay had become foul mouthed, a howling bigot, and a Holocaust denier. (So in that way I suppose Tay was exactly like most of Twitter. I’m only partially kidding.)

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist

The experiment was quickly shut down, but not before it was briefly reactivated and had a complete meltdown after discussing the pros of drug use while in front of law enforcement.

While Tay and Alexa are entertaining, albeit for very different reasons, they have raised some concerns within the industry as to what happens when and if a sentient AI is developed. Look at how far these interactive and adaptive interfaces have come in just the last five years. The curve has been increasing exponentially as processing devices and memory become smaller, cheaper, and more efficient, allowing for software of a complexity that was previously thought to be impossible. For the first time since it was dreamed up in the 1800’s the question of intelligent machines is beginning to shift in the minds of many researchers from “Can we?” to “Should we?” The moral and ethical ramifications of creating a free-thinking being are profound when we dig into issues like what individual rights exist for something that began life as a piece of lab equipment.

While I was recently penning a new character for a different series—an AI that “emerged,” so to speak, and exists only in software—these were some of the thoughts that were rattling around in my mind and they led me to these final questions: will we even recognize a sentient artificial intelligence when we encounter it? At the speed with which the average computer today can process information would such a being see any benefit to engaging in something so primitive as a spoken language with a creature that thinks so imprecisely and comparatively slow? Will it be driven by the needs of its biological counterparts and find ways to procreate? An interesting proposition given the amount of aggregate computing capability available with the advent of cloud based processing. A motivated, intelligent AI could spawn an untold number of clones in the blink of an eye.

This was just a brief scratching of the surface of a subject with daunting technical hurdles and many ethical pitfalls. My gut instinct tells me that a true AI will emerge as a result of thousands of hours of hard work by dedicated researchers and engineers as opposed to a spontaneous event that pops up out of the ether, but I couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess as to how soon that could be. It wouldn’t surprise me if they announced a breakthrough tomorrow anymore than it would if I lived the rest of my life without that definitive eureka! moment. But, as with most lofty goals, the journey is its own reward. Maybe—just maybe—all we’ll get is an app that actually knows what song we’re trying to play. In the end that alone might be worth the effort.

Joshua Dalzelle is a USA Today bestselling author, and an Amazon Top Ten Bestselling Science Fiction author, and creator of the hugely popular Omega Force series.

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So you want to fly to Alpha Centauri…

April 1, 2016/2 Comments/in Insider /by Nick Webb

Fictional Propulsion.

You want to get there, and you want to get there fast. How do you do it?

Well if you're Dale Earnhart Jr., you stomp down on the accelerator. If you're Usain Bolt, you push balls-to-the-wall and run like the wind. If you're Lance Armstrong, you dope up and hope no one notices.

But what if you're a starship captain? Fortunately, you are not real, and so have an advantage over the rest of us. You can engage the warp drive, or the quantum jump engines, or fly through a wormhole and explore the Delta quadrant.

For argument's sake, let's assume you're a real starship captain. That is, you need to obey as many laws of physics as humanly possibly. Basically, this is Hard Science Fiction–think Mark Watney on Mars: even though that dust storm (that extremely rarified 1 percent of Earth's atmosphere dust storm) could have never in a million years blown you off your feet, you still need to obey physics to get back to Earth.

Let's go out on a limb and say that in 500 years we have fusion down pat–as in, it's no longer perpetually 30 years in the future but in actually installed down in engineering on deck 10. Let's inch even farther along that limb and say that we have anti-matter production and containment solved, and know how to derive lots of useful energy from its reaction with normal matter. Deal? Ok, so we've more than inched–we're hanging by a thread off that limb, but these are realistic technical goals within the next few centuries, and they at least let us begin to address the ugly truth: Interstellar space travel is very hard and will require unthinkably enormous amounts of energy.

Let's jump tracks for a moment. What is our goal as a starship captain? Let's keep it simple and easy (and dire): our colony on the third planet of Alpha Centauri just sent out a distress signal. Aliens are attacking, and they desperately need our help. Of course, they actually sent out the distress signal 5 years ago, but the transmission didn't reach us until now because, as we all know, radio waves are a form of light, which travels at the speed of, uh, light. What do we do?

Full speed to Alpha Centauri! Helm, lay in a course! Engage the engines! Full thrust! We will avenge them!

EVENTUALLY!

You see, Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to us, is nearly 5 lightyears away. Let's assume for the moment that our starship can sustain a substantial thrust for an extended period of time. Just for convenience, and because it's nice to have Earth-like gravity on our ship, let's say the thrust is 1 g. Furthermore, assume our ship weighs about 1000 tons, and that we're able to extract ALL of the energy out of our anti-matter reaction and dump it into propulsion. Easy-peasy, right? At this thrust, we'll max out at about 96% of the speed of light halfway through our journey before we flip the ship around and start slowing down in time to not collide with the third planet of Alpha Centauri at relativistic and therefore splat-inducing speeds.

We have a problem.

In this 1000-ton-ship scenario, it takes about 5000 tons of anti-matter to get us there. Did I mention that the 1000 tons of ship has to include fuel? Oops. It does.

Basically, going 1 g at 100% anti-matter fuel conversion, it still takes about 5 times the amount anti-matter than you can store on your ship. Remember–you have to accelerate the fuel too. No free rides!

But let's look on the bright side. Even though our fictional starship didn't actually make it to Alpha Centauri, our non-trip took us only 3.77 years! From our perspective. From the point of view of everyone back on Earth, and the poor besieged souls on the third planet of Alpha Centauri, our non-trip took us 6.66 years. That's because as we approached the speed of light, from our perspective, the distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri shrunk. By as much as 72% at our highest speed. From their perspective, our clocks slowed down. If they could have watched us through our windows with an impossibly powerful telescope, they would have seen us moving in slo-mo aboard our ships.

Ok, so we can't sustain 1 g of acceleration for 3.77 years. How many g's can we sustain, and still be able to store all the fuel required for the trip?

About 15%-18% of a g. That's right, you'll be running around on your ship with the same amount of gravity as on the moon. And you'll have a lot of time to do it–10.5 years. 12 years according to observers.

Let's inch back towards reality. Just an inch. Suppose that our fuel conversion rate is not 100% like we assumed. Let's make it something more within the realm of physics. Like, say, 10% (still generous, if you ask me). Now we're talking about a 34 year trip. 34.5 years for observers because we only (only!) ever got up to about 28% of the speed of light.

You see why riveting, fast-paced interstellar hard science fiction is tricky? And we never even addressed the problem of propellant–you know, the stuff you have to heat up and shoot out the back of your thrusters.

And then there's the single particles of dust that will destroy your ship while traveling at a fraction of the speed of light. And if you're fortunate to not run into a dust particle, then the 1 atom of hydrogen per cubic meter of space will slam into your forward hull so fast that it will soon overheat and melt. And if you can somehow cool off your hull from all the interstellar hydrogen running into it, there's always the background radiation of space itself–the leftover glow of the big bang.

Huh, you say? Isn't that stuff harmless?

Yes, for us it's harmless, traveling very slowly. But speed up in any direction, and those harmless microwaves can blueshift into sunburn inducing ultraviolet waves, or worse, x-rays. But nothing a little lead shielding on your hull can't handle, right?

Uh, better slap on an extra 1000 tons of lead to your 1000 ton spaceship. Which means you'll need more fuel. Which means … crap …you died from old age trying to save the Alpha Centarians, Captain. Sorry.

Just stick to the solar system for your hard SciFi, ok? Think Pluto. Pluto's nice.

For fun, you can try out your own interstellar travel calculations here: https://nathangeffen.webfactional.com/spacetravel/spacetravel.php

Use the calculator to plan your space travel at your own risk. I am not responsible for any accidental time dilation, space contraction, shrinkage (the spaceship kind), old age from excessive space travel, bone density loss, impotence, baldness, and/or death from any misuse of the calculator. Proceed at your own risk.