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Alien Scientist 20: The 4-D Earthling

Stephen Marshall, a former resident of Tsukuba, has been writing Alien Scientist articles for the Alien Times since 2001. Even though he no longer lives in Tsukuba, he is still a regular contributor to the magazine. Here is his latest intergalactic report.

For a hundred years we have got used to the idea of space-time as a unifying construct of spatial and temporal dimensions. We have also got quite used to the idea of animated picture-shows, which give the illusion of three-dimensional motion using a succession of two-dimensional images. Put space-time and film together, and we get science-fiction movies. But the fabric of space-time can be studied much more prosaically by considering a few simple objects in a limited number of dimensions.

Take some ordinary handy three-dimensional object - a Pepper, say - and consider it passing through a two-dimensional plane. To do this, imagine cutting the Pepper up into thin slices, and converting the slices into a slideshow. As you run the slideshow, a first pepper-slice appears, and then a succession of slices wriggle around - all slightly different shapes and sizes - and finally disappear.

We can easily recognise the whole Pepper as the sum of all pepper-slices together, simultaneously. In other words, our familiar still-life Pepper, as it passes through a plane, does not change shape as such; it is just an irregular shaped object moving in space.

But now imagine the perspective of the inhabitants of a fictional 'Flatland' - a planar domain inhabited entirely by flat shapes such as squares, circles and assorted sliced grocery products.

The two-dimensional citizen of Flatland would recognise the passage of the Pepper through their plane only as a procession of changing pepper-slice shapes in time. The idea that the pepper-slices could collectively be regarded as a single fixed-shape object in a higher dimension would be completely alien (or at least, counter-intuitive) to the Flatlander.

To perceive the Pepper not as an array of separate 2D slices at different times, but as a whole 3D object at the same time, the Flatlander would have to imagine a sort of time-ordered stacked-up archive of all the stills from the pepper-slice movie - a sort of incorporeal frozen movie-object (conceptually parked partly in a hypothetical third spatial dimension).

So it is possible to conceive of different entities across the dimensions of space-time, though it can sometimes be hard work - even for familiar objects in familiar dimensions.

It is especially challenging where an object in one dimension appears as more than one object in another. For example, imagine a chunk of tree, say a trunk with a single branch off it, passing through the plane of Flatland. First to make an appearance is the roughly circular cross-section of the trunk. As the tree cross-section passes through, it enlarges and sprouts a branch, so that by the time the whole chunk has passed through the plane, there are two roundish cross-sections - that of the trunk and that of the branch. As far as Flatlanders are concerned, where once there was a single object; there are now two separate objects. But from our three-dimensional perspective, there is only the one single three-dimensional object in space: the chunk of trunk-plus-branch.

A similar thing happens when three-dimensional objects connect or diverge over time. For example, when a chicken lays an egg, what was one three-dimensional object becomes two. The post-chicken egg and the post-egg chicken are clearly separate, in our three-dimensional mindset; but they are nevertheless connected through time. In fact, just as our tree trunk and branch - although appearing as separate slices in Flatland - form a single solid object in space, the chicken and its egg can be seen as part of the same diverging object in space-time. In other words, we have a sort of frozen continuum of chickens and eggs stacked up back through time - a four-dimensional object.

Indeed, a family tree is exactly like this: a four-dimensional structure of parents and offspring, a series of separate three-dimensional family members, with different individuals appearing at different positions in time.

Indeed, the whole 'tree of life' - the entire earthly family tree of people, hominids, dinosaurs, eggs, chickens, peppers, sticky rice and unclassifiable creepy-crawly things forms part of a single planetary 'creature', a quivering tentacled four-dimensional entity reaching through space-time.

An alien observer might think of life on Earth as a single grotesque mass of mutant organic tissue, coupling with itself here, spewing out offspring there, consuming and expelling parts of itself, all the while racked by fractured identities, a short-term ancestral memory and a penchant for self-harm. Such a monstrous 4-D Earthling might be just the stuff of the alien's own science-fiction movie.

Alien Scientist 21: The Invisible Alien

Stephen Marshall, a former resident of Tsukuba, has been writing Alien Scientist articles for the Alien Times since 2001. Even though he no longer lives in Tsukuba, he is still a regular contributor to the magazine. Here is his latest intergalactic report.

If we had never invented transparent materials like glass, we might not believe that such magical invisible materials - that are both solid and see-through - could really exist.

Yet glass is a technological reality, made from rather mundane earthly kinds of ingredients like sand and limestone. These are, of course, entirely opaque, made up of atomic elements such as silicon, sodium, calcium and carbon. And these atoms are all made of even smaller particles like protons and electrons, each of which is so small as to be invisible in the first place.

Of course, when we look at an atom close up, we realise that there is very little there to see anyway: it is mostly empty space. The size of the atomic nucleus relative to the diameter of the whole atom is similar to the size of a tennis ball compared to, say, the diameter of a medium-sized town. And a town consisting of a tennis ball surrounded by empty space would be a town you could see right through.

Indeed, this emptiness pervades all matter around us that is built from atoms. Almost all of the volume of our towns, tennis balls, cats and cream cakes is just empty space: completely void, save for a few microscopic specks of matter dusted here and there. In a sense, it is a wonder that we, and everything around us, are not all completely see-through.

(If everything actually were see-through, of course, we wouldn't be able to see anything at all. We couldn't even see the insides of our own eyelids, from the backs of our retinas).

The difference between substances that are transparent and those that are opaque is to do with their structure at the molecular level. In other words, the different appearance of glass and sand or coal and diamond is due to their different molecular structures, even if these are made up of the same kinds of atoms, which in turn are made up of a kit of the same sub-atomic particles like neutrons or quarks. So transparency and opacity are effectively properties of the built structures, rather than properties of the individual parts in the building kit.

The historic discovery that the stars and planets are made out of the same kinds of elements found on Earth was a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the universe. On the one hand, this made the universe more familiar, and its component parts more, well, universal. On the other hand, it also opened up the possibility of outlandish life-forms inhabiting other planets, which were now understood to be other 'worlds' rather than just heavenly nightlights. As a result, we tend to be more imaginative with our alien biology than our alien chemistry.

If we were visited by an unidentified flying object made out of some strange invisible-looking material, we would most easily believe that it was the technological product of an alien life-form, rather than imagine that objects from outer space were made from some special extra-terrestrial substance - invisibilium, let's say - that was alien to chemistry.

We could even imagine the aliens themselves could be invisible - or at least, evolved to be more or less transparent, like extra-terrestrial jellyfish or fibre-optic stick insects.

In fact, successfully adapted invisible aliens could even travel in their invisible spaceships to settle new planets. We could imagine just a few precautions they would need to keep as invisible as possible, if they came to live on Earth.

For a start, an otherwise invisible alien would have to watch out that it would not cast a refractive shadow, if its body were to bend or scatter the light in an unearthly manner. Then, it should avoid smoky bars, in case its breathing created telltale smoke signals in the atmosphere. And, it should avoid attracting too many flies, bouncing off its invisible body.

An invisible immigrant should take particular care when eating out. Imagine that our alien has found itself a nice piece of fruit, packed with tasty seasonal insects, or some leftover human meal, say a pizza with extra toppings of maggots and fungus. The danger is that once ingested, the terrestrial food will remain visible as it passes through the transparent alimentary tract, so that the alien becomes horribly visible from the inside out: a walking squelching sack of bile and compost-fodder. To remain decently invisible, the alien would be well advised to bring its own invisible food chain, from home.

And if successfully transparent - magically solid but see-through just like glass - then invisible aliens need not be confined to science fiction.

Alien Scientist 22: Inter-planetary Smell Sensation

Stephen Marshall, a former resident of Tsukuba, has been writing Alien Scientist articles for the Alien Times since 2001. Even though he no longer lives in Tsukuba, he is still a regular contributor to the magazine. Here is his latest intergalactic report.

Of the five classically recognised senses, the sense of smell sometimes seems like the one we value the least. Smell can seem little more than a foretaste of real taste, or touch. And smellscapes themselves sometimes seem limited compared with other sensory worlds. Unlike intricate visual imagery or complex orchestral compositions, it seems that there is less scope for creating rich aromatic assemblies or symphonies of smell.

Yet, while smell may not seem as direct and instant as seeing or hearing, it can still have its uses. Like the knight's move in chess, it may not always be the fastest or strongest agent, but can get around corners where others can't reach. You may be able to smell what you can't see or hear, and people and things can leave telltale smells once they have long gone from sight or earshot.

Humans can apparently distinguish about ten thousand smells. We may not be consciously aware we have such an olfactory catalogue at our disposal, although just thinking about food can get us imagining. We can distinguish a tuna from a salmon by their smell. One could say that each species, at least, has a smell. And foods like noodles or dumplings that never lived the life of individual species also have their characteristic smells. We can combine species to get more smells: lemon and lime, salt and vinegar or duck and plum sauce have their own distinct aromas. Herbs and spices help multiply the number of smells, to create an explosion of aromatic possibility.

Because the sensation of smell is based on the detection of chemical molecules, we would expect similar kinds of smell to permeate other parts of the universe: planets smelling of iron or methane, at least, if not moons smelling of custard dust. And yet, we must expect lots of new smells to be out there, just as when going abroad you find different concoctions of food smells, even coming from the same natural ingredients. And if a terrestrial chicken can smell different from a terrestrial duck, and a courgette from a cucumber, we must expect alien main courses and accompaniments, however closely they might resemble their Earthling equivalents, to smell a bit different too.

Indeed, the more exotic and complex the alien environment, the more smells we might expect to encounter. We can imagine that sophisticated alien civilisations might create their own synthetic aromas - like different kinds of under-tentacle deodorant, interior chrysallis-freshener, or pollinate-me perfume.

In fact, for all we know, smell might play a much more important role in the lives of certain alien civilisations. Perhaps some alien races can not only detect but mentally catalogue any chemical elements, being able to distinguish the smell of ununnilium from unununium as easily as we can distinguish sulphur from chlorine, or alcohol from H2O.

And perhaps - like Earthling dogs - some alien races may use smell much more, not only to perceive their world, but as a deliberate means of communication. Perhaps a race of alien canines use an array of aromas to transmit messages to each other, and eventually develop a system of telecommunications based on smell, so that a smell carefully emitted in one location can be picked up remotely at another location. Just as humans use cellphones for voice communication, we could imagine our extra-terrestrial tail-waggers sending excited scent messages to each other on their smellphones. And just like voicemail, smellmail would allow subscribers to access any messages deposited while they were out.

Any kind of smell-message, after all, is just a package of smelly molecules - crafty particles too small to sense by sight or touch. So a long-distance smellmessage could in principle have the effect of transmitting a small package of significant particles over great distances. Just as our radio and TV transmissions escape from the Earth to beam out across the galaxy - where they might some day be picked up by some alien civilisation with the right kind of receiver - it is possible to imagine some alien smellmessage transmitted a long way over space and time and eventually picked up on some receptive planet. The message itself might be something quite trivial - some shaggy dog gossip, or a domestic dispute over a buried bone. But, more important than the message might be the medium itself: some kind of chemical package, like a spore, that could end up seeding life on another planet.

Evolution from a canine conversation? Now that would be an inter-planetary smell sensation.

Alien Scientist 23: The Alien Within

Stephen Marshall, a former resident of Tsukuba, has been writing Alien Scientist articles for the Alien Times since 2001. Even though he no longer lives in Tsukuba, he is still a regular contributor to the magazine. Here is his latest intergalactic report.

A tapeworm living in the human gut has no digestive system of its own. It absorbs the intestine's processed nutrients directly through its outer surface, like a ready-made all-over- body-meal. So the tapeworm is exploiting its host's digestive system instead of investing in one of its own. It siphons off the goodness from its human benefactor - who goes to so much effort (earning a living, shopping and eating) to get the food down there in the first place - and uses it for its own sustenance.

The case of the tapeworm makes us think about what it is to be a complete organism. While we may be used to the idea that humans have some other organisms (like gut bacteria) acting as internal helpers, we may tend to think that they are not really essential, but we just tolerate them because it suits us, like the crocodile allowing the bird to pick its teeth because it can't be bothered evolving - or inventing - a toothpick of its own.

We tend to feel that we are not actually dependent on the parasite, in the way that the parasite seems dependent on us. After all, our gut provides the parasite's very home - a nice place to settle down, hatch eggs and bring up the larvae. Without 'us', there can be no 'them'. In a sense we live and breathe on their behalf. The dependency is clear in cases like the tapeworm, which we might regard as an incomplete organism - one lacking a digestive system - whereas we consider ourselves whole, even though our own digestive system makes use of live-in non-humans to help it function.

This interdependency means that humans might be regarded as 'composite' creatures by any objective observers. An alien taxonomist studying life-forms on Earth might classify us not as a distinct species, but as a composite life-form comprising not-quite-whole species of tapeworms, microbes, and homo sapiens.

Conversely, we might face difficulty in recognising distinct alien species, if they too formed a tangled jungle of taxons and taxonomists, hosts and parasites. And once we are used to ourselves as hosting parasites - like aliens within us - we can also imagine having alien parasites living off us too.

Imagine a cold-blooded alien that came to live on or in our bodies because of our warmth. Such a parasite would have no central-heating system of its own, but simply live off our body heat. All its other functions, like eating, sleeping and reproduction, it could take care of by itself.

Once it had made itself at home, it might then tap into some of the other local facilities. Imagine that the parasite could plug into the visual system of its human host. Instead of the parasite as a wretched 'bug' blindly groping around the murky bowels of its host, we could imagine this parasite perched just behind our eyes - like our own 'mind's eye' perspective - taking in the view by tapping into our optic nerve, like live video streaming. It would be able to sense all the visual richness available to the human eye, even if it had only the intellect of an insect to process the information.

Or, imagine a parasite that not only connected to the optic nerve, but plugged directly into the brain. Residing somewhere in the skull, it would not need a brain (or cranium) of its own, but could feed off the thoughts and mental processes of its host. It would have access to all the sensory information processed by the brain, and all our memory archives too.

And if there were a two-way data feed, the parasite's body might even be able to send its own requests to the brain's central processing unit, perhaps while the brain was otherwise idling. Perhaps indeed our brainless alien parasite could plug in, tune in and switch on the brain, and ask it to do a few calculations, or run a few scenarios, while we slept.

Like a 'virus' in the brain, such an alien parasite would be metaphorically feeding off our brains - rather than literally feeding off our stomachs - while happily carrying out its other bodily functions for its own benefit.

But if it is spooky to think of an alien body tapping into our brain, then how about an alien that brings its own brain, but takes over our body? It could unplug our brain, and use our body to breathe Earth air, to eat Earth food, and generally see the sights. That would be not so much a parasitic alien brain-sucker, as an invasive alien body-snatcher.