Spontaneous Musings

This just has to be shared...

Seven New Earth Sized Planets with Water Have Been Discovered in the Trappist-1 System and May House Alien Lifeforms.

Trappist by the way stands for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, which initially detected three of the planets in May 2016.

Now this is the part made me laugh...and got me pondering...and feel the need to share with everyone.

If advanced intelligent life has evolved in the TRAPPIST-1 system, they could already have detected our radio and television transmissions. Our broadcasts of Happy Days, Three’s Company, and Charlie’s Angels are arriving there now. Our own SETI (the Search for Extra- terrestrial Intelligence) has monitored the TRAPPIST-1 system for any artificial radio signals but so far has not detected any alien transmissions. Further surveys however, will be conducted in the future.

While a great many Earth-sized extra-solar planets (exoplanets, for short) have already been catalogued, this discovery brings us another step closer to answering one of the big questions in the universe. Are we alone?

Okay, admittedly they probably did this back in the 1970s, but they couldn't have found anything better to broadcast than Happy Days, Three's Company and Charlie's Angels? I mean come on...there had to have been something...what about Star Trek? Granted I'm not sure Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, or Six Million Dollar Man would have been a good idea.

Anyhow this got me to pondering..."What three television series would I broadcast out into space? Keeping in mind that this may be the only information that an alien race in the universe receives about my species?"

It also inspired me to add a conversation about Charlies Angels to my sci-fi novel. While working on solving a technical issue, an alien and a human engineer discuss Charlie's Angels.

"Who is this Charlie?" asks the alien.

"He's a billionaire who hires three woman to work as his investigative team."

"Yes, I gathered that. But why would beautiful women work for a guy who just calls them on the phone and never appears face to face?"

"He pays them lots of money, you'd be surprised what people used to do for money."

"Actually, no. We sort of counted on that. How do you think we managed to invade and conguer your planet successfully. And while puzzling, the billionaire worship does explain your choice of Donald Trump as President. We had wondered about that. Not that it would have mattered. We would have invaded regardless. But back to Charlies Angels - why are they called Angels?"


I still need to work on that. But it does inspire all sorts of delightful sci-fi fiction dialogue doesn't it? I mean can you imagine what an alien race would make of Happy Days, Charlies Angels and Three's Company? They must think we're terribly sexist.

Also, if you had to choose three television serials to broadcast into space to alien worlds, which would you pick? I mean this is your job and you have to do it. Choose three, and think about the consequences. (Ie, I don't think the Walking Dead, A Handmaid's Tale, American Gods or Game of Thrones would be a good idea. Then again, they might scare off the aliens...so who knows.)

Raining. Back aches, or rather neck. Tired of the rain. I'm one of those people who requires sunlight. I feel like a plant. A carnivorous plant. Less so than before. As I get older, red meat is harder to digest for some reason. Actually a lot of foods are harder to digest. What's up with that?

Finished watching the six episode series Mars on the National Geographic Channel. It's available on demand -- if you have cable and want to check it out. Do I recommend? Eh. It depends on what you like. The series is oddly told -- or has a rather innovative, if jarring, narrative structure. It's based on the book "How We Populate Mars", along with "Packing for Mars", and intertwined with the "scripted" narrative about a trip to create a settlement on Mars in 2033, is a present day documentary detailing how they got there - specifically the science behind the fiction, or what would be required to get to Mars, what risks are entailed, and what is currently being done to make this happen. In short, it's a bit like watching television novella with academic and scientific footnotes. Very odd experience. I found it a bit jarring, much in the same way that I find reading books with footnotes jarring. Mainly because I'm incapable of ignoring the footnotes, and so disrupt my reading to look at them. Here, you don't have much choice. At various breaks in the action, you jump back in time to a documentary explaining the science behind it.

In the second episode, we have the death of the commanding officer on Mars juxtaposed with the deaths on the Space Shuttle Columbia, Apollo 13, and a man who is spending a year in space, while his daughter explains how much she misses him. This is interspersed with interview footage of the team journeying to Mars. I got a bit lost in that episode, or rather my attention kept wandering.

It does get better. The series is at its best when they are problem solving. The human relationships feel a bit stilted. Mainly because the format doesn't quite lend itself to human relations. Way too much telling and not enough showing in that area. But with the problem solving, the juxtaposition of documentary with scripted story -- of what it would be like to go to Mars, does work. Like I said, it's a bit similar to reading a sci-fi novel with footnotes.

Captivated me enough to stick with it. Partly because I am a bit of a space nerd. I find the whole idea of journeying to a distant planet fascinating. And the science behind it -- compelling.
But I'm not sure you'd enjoy it if you weren't a space nerd.

Okay, off to bed. I'm up writing past 9 again. Can't help myself. I write better at night for some reason. Takes a while for my thoughts to gell, and they tend to do it best when I'm relaxed, which is at night.