3 ms·

I would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through

I would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through the rapidly cooling universe. And then one day an ark filled with primordial plasma passes by Earth and says hi.

TehCorwiz 6y ago
Robert L. Forward wrote a pair of hard sci-fi novels, 'Dragon's Egg' & 'Starquake' about a manned Earth probe that discovers sentient life that evolved in the hot plasma on the surface of a star. I prefer the second more, but both are very good.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  * a neutron star
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    You may enjoy reading about the best models of the structure of the matter near the surface of a neutron star, that is called "nuclear pasta" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta and one with graphics that explain the names https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-stars/ https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-s...
tablespoon 6y ago
> I would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through the rapidly cooling universe. And then one day an ark filled with primordial plasma passes by Earth and says hi. Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series actually touches on quite a bit of that, but his writing is such that I'd honestly prefer to read it in outline form with the conceptual bits pasted in. IIRC, the short story "The Quagma Datum" from Vacuum Diagrams deals with that most directly, and is similar the story your asking for, complete with an ark. Also the titular Xeelee are also survivors from the very early universe.
- aerique 6y ago
  I can't get through Baxter's writing either. Well, I did manage one book and his ideas are grand, such that one keeps thinking about it for a while after reading his stuff. But I don't know what it is about his writing. It just isn't very gripping. This opposed to f.e. Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Similar hard scifi, but much more fun to read.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > I can't get through Baxter's writing either. Well, I did manage one book and his ideas are grand, such that one keeps thinking about it for a while after reading his stuff. He also reuses his "grand" ideas. For instance, I skimmed Xeelee Redemption because it's apparently the first book where he actually depicted a Xeelee, and a lot of the chapters were rehashes of ideas he'd previously explored (e.g. humans evolving into hive organisms, species surviving environmental destruction by becoming symbiotic composite organisms).
lovemenot 6y ago
Suppose such very early organisms had lived at quantum scale, or across the quantum / classical divide. At around the scale of a virus. And suppose their replication had entailed production of entangled particles. Without need for fast travel those particles would now exist everywhere in the universe. Having been carried here by expansion / inflation. Many of those remnant particles / organisms would still be entangled, having never encountered another particle to cause their collapse. This allows real-time (unconstrained by FTL) communication with arbitrary places in the universe. We would communicate with this system using Earth-originated organisms at similar scale, collapsing those early entangled particles and watching the effect on our viruses' e.g. their spin.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  Entanglement definitely does not allow FTL communication. IIUC the "wave function collapse" or whatever[0] does happen instantaneously, but you can't get any actual information through it without sending conventional signals as well. [0] I grow ever more convinced that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense, but it's the easiest language to acknowledge the weirdness of spooky action at a distance.

TehCorwiz 6y ago

Robert L. Forward wrote a pair of hard sci-fi novels, 'Dragon's Egg' & 'Starquake' about a manned Earth probe that discovers sentient life that evolved in the hot plasma on the surface of a star. I prefer the second more, but both are very good.

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
* a neutron star
- gus_massa 6y ago
  You may enjoy reading about the best models of the structure of the matter near the surface of a neutron star, that is called "nuclear pasta" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta and one with graphics that explain the names https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-stars/ https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-s...

tablespoon 6y ago

> I would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through the rapidly cooling universe. And then one day an ark filled with primordial plasma passes by Earth and says hi. Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series actually touches on quite a bit of that, but his writing is such that I'd honestly prefer to read it in outline form with the conceptual bits pasted in. IIRC, the short story "The Quagma Datum" from Vacuum Diagrams deals with that most directly, and is similar the story your asking for, complete with an ark. Also the titular Xeelee are also survivors from the very early universe.

aerique 6y ago
I can't get through Baxter's writing either. Well, I did manage one book and his ideas are grand, such that one keeps thinking about it for a while after reading his stuff. But I don't know what it is about his writing. It just isn't very gripping. This opposed to f.e. Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Similar hard scifi, but much more fun to read.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > I can't get through Baxter's writing either. Well, I did manage one book and his ideas are grand, such that one keeps thinking about it for a while after reading his stuff. He also reuses his "grand" ideas. For instance, I skimmed Xeelee Redemption because it's apparently the first book where he actually depicted a Xeelee, and a lot of the chapters were rehashes of ideas he'd previously explored (e.g. humans evolving into hive organisms, species surviving environmental destruction by becoming symbiotic composite organisms).

lovemenot 6y ago

Suppose such very early organisms had lived at quantum scale, or across the quantum / classical divide. At around the scale of a virus. And suppose their replication had entailed production of entangled particles. Without need for fast travel those particles would now exist everywhere in the universe. Having been carried here by expansion / inflation. Many of those remnant particles / organisms would still be entangled, having never encountered another particle to cause their collapse. This allows real-time (unconstrained by FTL) communication with arbitrary places in the universe. We would communicate with this system using Earth-originated organisms at similar scale, collapsing those early entangled particles and watching the effect on our viruses' e.g. their spin.

andrewflnr 6y ago
Entanglement definitely does not allow FTL communication. IIUC the "wave function collapse" or whatever[0] does happen instantaneously, but you can't get any actual information through it without sending conventional signals as well. [0] I grow ever more convinced that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense, but it's the easiest language to acknowledge the weirdness of spooky action at a distance.