THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/07/09 -- Vol. 28, No. 6, Whole Number 1556
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Song Lyric (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Thoughts On Issues of Exo-Biology (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Sex and Birds (letter of comment by John Purcell)
Birds (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
This Week's Reading (The Connectivity of the Library of
Babel [Part 2]) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
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TOPIC: Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This week's MT VOID is brought to you by the Pre-Owned-Humvee
Owners Exchange. Buy a used Humvee today. Real men don't worry
about gas prices. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: Song Lyric (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We hear on the radio a sort of smarmy love song called "I'm Walking
Behind You." I thought to myself I could write a better song to
fit that title. The original song is sung by Frank Sinatra at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAQtg_B6kiI. What do you think?
I'm walking behind you,
And I have a knife.
I'll be walking behind you
The rest of your life.
Now isn't that better? His melody is the same as mine. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: Thoughts On Issues of Exo-Biology (comments by Mark R.
Leeper)
There have recently been some discoveries of Earth-like planets and
that gets some people excited about the possibility that they might
have Earth-like life. Some scientists seem to believe that life is
very likely to generate on Earth-like planets. Nature seems to
move in the direction of creating amino acids, the building blocks
of life. I am skeptical. First of all, I am not sure at what
point in Earth's history it became an "Earth-like" planet. For the
vast majority of Earth's history it would have been fairly hostile
to the emergence of life. It was "Earth-like" all that time. You
really have to catch a planet in a small window of time if you want
to find life as we think of life. But have the Earth-like
qualities of Earth really fostered life?
We place all of life in the history of Earth in what I take to be a
single evolutionary tree. So why didn't parallel-life develop on
this planet? Okay, it did form, but that is not what I mean. I
mean that the probability that life would form naturally on a
planet is probably the same that life would independently develop
twice given that it developed once. But I believe the current
theory is that there was only one origin of life. If life
developed a second and third time on this planet, wouldn't there be
disjoint evolutionary trees? But I think the current thinking is
that there is only one tree.
Well, there could be multiple explanations. It could be that life
did develop multiple times but the life was so similar that we
could not determine that some life has come from a different
development of life. If there were two disjoint trees of life on
Earth, each from an independent development of life, we might
erroneously assume that the two roots of the zoological trees have
a fictional common ancestor. This is similar to the Creationist
claim that species were created pretty much the way they are today
and, for example, humans and apes have no common ancestor. This
makes for a very large number of short family trees. This is a
possible model, but it is unlikely because the apes' tree is so
similar to the human tree and the simplest explanation for that is
that the two trees spring from a common root. And they are hence
connected. However, it may be hard to tell two trees are really
two trees without actually deciding if they have a common root.
Let me make an analogy. As I look at my backyard I see two trees.
Let us assume these are the same species of tree. Then I might not
know for sure the two trees really are two trees. Down below they
might join and have a single root system. Unless I dig up and see
the entire trees I cannot know for sure they are two different
trees. Unless you can see the entire structure, two adjacent trees
are hard to distinguish from a single tree. Of course I might
examine the DNA of the two trees and determine if they are the
same, but even if they are the same one could have been grown from
a cutting of the other. (Side note: In one sense they may even be
the same tree even if not connected. All navel orange trees I
believe are genetically equivalent and owe their origin to one tree
from which cuttings have been taken. In a sense that makes them a
single tree. But I am digressing.) My point is that two graphical
trees are indistinguishable from a single tree unless you can see
for yourself that they are connected.
We tend to think that the zoological tree is all one tree having
its root in unicellular creatures and that even the unicellular
creatures have some common ancestor. But it is easy to see
similarities in complex creatures like humans and chimpanzees and
to conclude they are so similar they must have a common ancestor.
But given two different single-celled creatures I am not so sure
there is enough structure to tell if there is a common ancestor.
That would make it possible that there may be multiple trees that
are really not relatives of each other.
Another possibility is that there are multiple trees that merged at
a higher level. It has been suggested that mitochondria are really
a virus that originally invaded a different kind of creature and
stayed in a sort of symbiosis. It might be possible that they may
owe their origin to a different emergence of life than we do.
So life on Earth may form one tree with one origin. Call this
"Hypothesis V". It may form multiple disjoint trees: "Hypothesis
VV". Or it could be multiple trees that have joined at a higher
point: "Hypothesis W". (I assume the reader will understand why I
chose those names.) If V is true I would ask why there was only
one emergence of life, and it makes the finding of exobiology less
likely. Hypotheses VV and W make it seem more likely that life
will be widespread in the universe.
None of this changes my belief that Drake's Equation (see the link
below) yields probabilities so small that it is highly unlikely
that the Human Race will ever encounter a recognizably intelligent
alien, though I also believe the probabilities are also in favor of
there being many cases intelligent life many on many planets in the
universe.
Wikipedia on Drake's Equation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
[-mrl]
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TOPIC: Sex and Birds (letter of comment by John Purcell)
In response to Mark's comments on "Jurassic Love Nests" in the
07/31/09 issue of the MT VODI, John Purcell writes:
Your latest production has produced some comments from me that I
feel compelled to share with you. To whit:
I agree with you that America is extraordinary Victorian in its
prudency about sex, especially in movies. Your comment "We are
watching this program "Jurassic Fight Club" that is about
paleontology and long extended sequences of dinosaurs fighting.
I admit it. I enjoy it more than the European equivalent which I
assume would be 'Jurassic Love Nests' or 'The Jurassic Dating
Game'" had me chuckling. Would you much rather be watching long
extended sequences of dinosaurs having sex? If so, I suggest you
and Evelyn start sleeping in separate bedrooms. ;=)
That reminds me: there really is a movie called "Jurassic Pork",
which has nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with a
batch of prehistoric swine brought back to life in the 20th
century. Google it in sometime and you'll see what I mean. [-jp]
Mark replies:
Now you have me ready to look for "Jurassic Pro Wresting". Or how
about "Cretaceous Celebrity Poker"? The one program where the
Tyrannosaurus is at a disadvantage because he cannot hold his cards
and see them too. [-mrl]
In response to Mark's comments on birds in the same issue, John
writes:
It is also very interesting to think of birds being descendants of
dinosaurs. That bit of knowledge is fascinating, and gives one
pause when considering evolution. Of course, that train of
thought gets me to musing about the denizens that populate this
part of Texas, which my wife and I have labeled The Land That Time
Forgot. There are insects, snakes, and lizards (geckos and
anoles) in our yard that, quite frankly, remind me of old SF
movies with Ray Harryhausen special effects. There hasn't been a
hard freeze here in positively ages, so these beasties thrive on
from time immemorial.
And I do love what you tell your students (having dinosaur for
Thanksgiving). That must cause some weird faces. Naturally, my
mind spins out of control with lines like this, so I start
thinking of the Flintstones eating brontosaurus burgers and racks
of spare ribs the size of a barge. Sometimes I am hungry enough I
could probably eat ribs like that. Imagine the size of the
barbecue grill you'd need to cook that up! [-jp]
Mark replies:
Well, now it seems birds are not descendents of dinosaurs but
cousins. And even being cousins, dinosaurs never show up to
family reunions.
And Ray Harryhausen maybe created thunder lizards, but he hates to
see real lizards used as dinosaurs. Though the truth is that he
used a blown-up lizard in ONE MILLION YEARS BC. [-mrl]
And in response to the various letters in the same issue, John
writes:
Anyway, I better leave it at that. I don't do math very well, but
the computational discussions in the latest VOID were still
interesting and practical, which would have helped me taking this
subject in high school and college. I'll leave this kind of stuff
to you and your mathematically inclined readers. [-jp]
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TOPIC: Birds (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
In response to Mark's comments on birds in the 07/31/09 issue of
the MT VOID, Steve Milton writes, "If birds are no longer in the
evolutionary line of dinosaurs, what is an archeopteryx classified
as?" [-smm]
Mark replies, "Good question. If birds lose their dinosaur
status, archeopteryx would also for the same reasons, I would
think. I think that archeopteryx are still an ancestor of birds.
There still is some question of whether archeopteryx is genuine,
but I think these days the tide of opinion is that it is.
Besides, other feathered dinosaurs have been found." [-mrl]
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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Connectivity of the Library of Babel (Part 2)
Last week I wrote about the connectivity of the Library of Babel as
described by Jorge Luis Borges. Well, I wrote that article a while
ago, and as I was working on it, I discovered that there had just
been a book published on that very topic: THE UNIMAGINABLE
MATHEMATICS OF BORGES' LIBRARY OF BABEL by William Goldbloom Bloch
(ISBN-13 978-0-19-533457-9, ISBN-10
0-19-533457-4).
Bloch covers all the mathematical aspects of the Library, not just
the layout of rooms. So he has chapters on "Combinatorics:
Contemplating Variations of the 23 Letters", "Information Theory:
Cataloguing the Collection", "Real Analysis: The Book of Sand", and
"Topology and Cosmology: The Universe (Which Others Call the
Library)". But the chapter which covers the same topic as I did
last week is "Geometry and Graph Theory: Ambiguity and Access".
Before I talk about that, though, I want to mention his conclusions
in "Topology and Cosmology: The Universe (Which Others Call the
Library)". Bloch begins with the two sentences "The Library is a
sphere whose precise center is any hexagon, and whose circumference
is inaccessible," and "The Library is unlimited and periodic."
These he reduces to six requirements: 1) spherical, 2) uniform
symmetry, 3) circumference unobtainable, 4) no boundaries, 5)
limitless, and 6) periodic. And from these he concludes that the
Library must be on a 3-sphere (existing in 4-space). This is not
the approach I took; I assumed the Library existed in a basically
Euclidean three-dimensional space.
As for what I discussed last week, Bloch has new insights. For
example, I said, "For every hexagon to be accessible from every
other hexagon, if only (a maximum of) two exits are allowed per
hexagon, then it appears that the layout must be in effect a
spiral. ... The problem with this is that it in effect makes each
floor of the Library a single infinitely long room with one fixed
end. This does not appear to be how Borges wanted the reader to
picture the Library. And indeed, the necessity to select a
starting hexagon--which will have only one exit instead of two--
violates both the statement that all hexagons are identical and
that any hexagon may be considered the center of the Library."
Bloch has no problem with each floor being a single long path,
perhaps because his embedding of the Library in 4-space solves the
problem of having a starting hexagon with only one exit.
However, I also said that "one might marginally improve the
connectivity by alternating clockwise and counter-clockwise
traversals on alternating floors." Since I had assumed each
hexagon had two exits, each with a spiral staircase, this is just
wrong. As Bloch points out, this assumption mandates that every
floor of the Library is identical to every other. It turns out
that if each hexagon has two exits but only one staircase, then it
is possible to have different paths on each floor.
I also wanted to point out that the topic covered in
"Combinatorics: Contemplating Variations of the 23 Letters" is one
that Borges was not the first to address. Kurd Lasswitz's "The
Universal Library" was first published in the United States in 1958
in Clifton Fadiman's classic anthology, FANTASIA MATHEMATICA
(ISBN-13 978-0-387-94931-4, ISBN-10 0-387-94931-3), but had been
published in Germany over half a century earlier, in 1901. And
indeed Borges discusses it at length in his essay "The Total
Library" (1939), and then explicitly lists it as a major
inspiration for "The Library of Babel" (1941) in his introduction
to his collection FICCIONES. Lasswitz assumes 100 symbols rather
than 25, but is also more concerned with the number of books rather
than the layout of any library containing them.
(There have been other books covering the mathematical aspects of
Borges's work. Alas, most of them seem to be out of print and
hence very expensive.) [-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning,
to make the world signify, to render it
visible. We are not, however, in danger
of lacking meaning; quite the contrary,
we are gorged with meaning and it is
killing us.
--Jean Baudrillard