Project Hail Mary

Text in black are quotes; text in green are my notes. I sometimes write in Spanish.

• They say hunger is the greatest seasoning. When you’re starving, your brain rewards you handsomely for finally eating. Good job, it says, we get to not die for a while! #

• No one cares about the right thing when they’re hungry. #

• Cool thing about pendulums: The time it takes for one to swing forward and backward—the period—won’t change, no matter how wide it swings. If it’s got a lot of energy, it’ll swing farther and faster, but the period will still be the same. This is what mechanical clocks take advantage of to keep time. That period ends up being driven by two things, and two things only: the length of the pendulum and gravity. #

• “They’re wrong!” I crossed my arms. “There’s nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen! They’re required for Earth life, sure. But another planet could have completely different conditions. All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!” #

• “Believe it or not, light has momentum,” I said. “It exerts a force. If you were out in space and you turned on a flashlight, you’d get a teeny, tiny amount of thrust from it.” #

• Pathogens evolve slowly over time to attack specific hosts. Astrophage has never even been on Earth before. There’s just no way it can ‘infect’ humans. #

• “How did you do it? What killed it?” “I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe.” “You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.” #

• Besides, if I had a nickel for every time I wanted to smack a kid’s parents for not teaching them even the most basic things…well…I’d have enough nickels to put in a sock and smack those parents with it. #

• Planets don’t just reflect light. They also emit it. Everything emits light. The temperature of the object defines the wavelength of light emitted. Planets are no exception. #

• When light hits gas molecules, the electrons get all worked up. Then they calm down and re-emit the energy as light. But the frequency of the photons they emit is very specific to the molecules involved. Astronomers used this for decades to know what gases are out there far, far away. That’s what spectroscopy is all about. #

• Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can’t interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That’s why there’s a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off. #

• Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years. #

• Oh, right. Relativity. I have no idea how much time it took. Or, rather, I have no idea how much time I experienced. When you get going near the speed of light, you experience time dilation. More time will have gone by on Earth than I have experienced since I left Earth. Relativity is weird. #

• As hundreds of astronauts have done before, I place my faith and my life in the hands of the engineers who designed the system. #

• Their move is taking a long time and I’m getting bored. Wow. I’m sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation…and I’m bored. Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal. #

• But the one I’m most interested in is the Fourier transform. It’s the most basic tool in sound-wave analysis and arguably the most important. There’s a lot of complicated math on how to make it happen, but the end result is this: if you run a sound wave through a Fourier transform, it will give you a list of the individual notes being played at the same time. So if I played a C-major chord and let this app listen to it, the app would tell me there’s a C, an E, and a G. It’s incredibly useful. #

• Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern. #

• Sometimes, the stuff we all hate ends up being the only way to do things. #

• Lokken cleared her throat. “I heard there were tornadoes in Europe?” #

• “Oh! Wow. Why did it break off?” He wiggles his carapace. “Not know. Many things break. My people make ship very hurry. No time to make sure all things work good.” Deadline-induced quality issues: a problem all over the galaxy. #

• leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?” “Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.” “That’s…dark.” “That’s Russian!” #

• Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies. #

• We have names for frequency ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum. Then again, my students all have eyes and they were still amazed when I told them “x-rays,” “microwaves,” “Wi-Fi,” and “purple” were all just wavelengths of light. #

• Eridians don’t know about relativistic physics. They calculated their entire journey with Newtonian physics. They worked it all out by assuming they could just accelerate faster and faster and the speed of light wasn’t an issue. They don’t know about time dilation. Rocky doesn’t realize that Erid experienced a whole bunch more time than he did on that trip. They don’t know about length dilation. The distance to Tau Ceti will actually increase as you slow down relative to it—even if you’re still going toward it. #

• My lungs, now full of carbon dioxide, panic. But the adrenaline rush doesn’t give me the strength I need to escape. It just keeps me awake so I can experience death in more detail. Thanks, adrenal glands. #

• “Math is not thinking. Math is procedure. Memory is not thinking. Memory is storage. Thinking is thinking. Problem, solution. You and me think same speed. Why, question?” #

• “First I have to wait for my computer to wake up.” “Hurry.” “Okay, I’ll wait faster.” “Sarcasm.” #

• Seems odd that a species could invent interstellar travel before inventing the transistor, but hey, Earth invented nuclear power, television, and even did several space launches before the transistor. #

• “It’s not a perfect system, though,” I say. “Antibiotics work very well at first, but then over the years, they become less and less effective. Eventually they barely work at all.” “Why, question?” “Diseases change. Antibiotics kill almost all the disease in the body, but some survive. By using antibiotics, humans are accidentally teaching diseases how to survive those antibiotics.” #

• When you think in base six, arbitrarily adding six to things is normal. #

• I spend a lot of time un-suiciding this suicide mission. #

• This outfit would severely limit Rocky’s ability to move freely, but hey, fashion isn’t about comfort or convenience. #