Aaaagh! Real Zombies!

Toga zombie is the worst!

  The zombie craze that has crept up on the world has displayed a large fanfare and with it discussion on the imminent zombie apocalypse. Everyone that has an inkling of interest in the genre has come up with their "zombie team," people that one would  enlist to help them survive in the aftermath of the zombie plague that destroys the world as we know it. I've been a zombie fan for years, since I first watched Romero's "Dead" series in high school (c. 2007 C.E.), So I may write a longer post than the usual due to personal bias.  

There zombies have shown up in every part of media from movies, games(board and video), books to even tv, and the mythos for zombies have changed over the years to accommodate trends in the public hysteria or the time.

The movie known for being the first film to center around zombies

Early Days: The idea of zombies have been around for a long time, generally being undead slaves to a powerful user of forbidden magic. Originating in Africa, zombies are first apparent in folklore where a person uses witchcraft to control another as a slave without will of its own, generally after being killed and revived. This takes its introductory form into North American culture with the 1932 film, "White Zombie." In it a voodoo priest runs amok with the protagonists love triangle with his ability to resurrect people as slaves.

The second sequel, and my favorite.

Modern Conception: The modern conception of the genre starts with the 1968 infamous horror movie, "Night Of The Living Dead," where zombies are transformed from mindless slaves to cannibalistic marauders. The premise is simple, the protagonist survivors must try to stay alive under an onslaught of graveyard ghouls that want to kill and eat them. There isn't really a formal reason why the dead come back to life other than the clues that are given; the zombies start rising after a satellite brings mysterious radiation from Venus back into the earth's atmosphere.
This type of 'radiation zombie' comes from the leftover hysteria over the successful atomic age horror movies, where the unknown and harmful effects of atomic radiation that transform natural things into horrible unnatural monsters.
This movie sets the standard for the zombie apocalypse genre, where the sheer numbers and ubiquity have started a quick breakdown of society into small pockets of degenerated survivors in a sea of zombie hostility. Its a genre that brings back the epic man versus nature (or in this case, un-nature?) conflict that has been successful in the past.

Shifting Origin: Since George A. Romero's "Dead" series, while the main concept has stayed the same, the cause of the zombie mayhem goes through a shift as people have become more knowledgeable to the facts of radiation poisoning."The Return Of The Living Dead," series during the 1990s, shifted the main culprit to the experimental chemical gas "2-4-5 Trioxin" that changes people into comical corpses that long for human brains. It invoked the fear of pollution and the effects on humans and the environment when the chemical saturates the cemetery ground as a pollutant in rainclouds.

This differs from the "Dead" series not only in the sense of a different back story, but also in the way zombies are spread throughout the world. When radiation turned people into zombies the population at large was already contaminated and one only needed to die to change into a zombie. "Return" started the trend in which a source of contamination spread the zombies in a plague-like fashion and is most common zombie storyline today. It is no longer just a fight to stay alive, but  also so as not to contract the zombie disease.

  Throughout all the zombie genre, zombies were naturally diseased and people that were bitten by them generally died soon after and turned into zombies and the rest of the group have to deal with the moral consequences of having to kill their friends and family. The difference here is that you don't have to be bitten by them to change into a zombie, only the original contaminate/disease that created them!

 The fear of epidemic is the more terrifying concept today because of the H1N1 and bird influenza scares that put people on edge, not mention the effects of the AIDS epidemic. The government has failed us before when AIDS first appeared on the scene, who's to say another horrible disease might show up and we won't know how to stop it before we are all wiped out?    

So could anything like that actually happen? Can people actually become zombies, rotting necrotic flesh not withstanding? Could an apocalyptic zombie world happen as well? We'll see what science has to say about that in my next post.
-'Till then, True Believers!(as Stan Lee would say)

P.S. - I've posted links to the Monster Island Resort podcast page because the host can explain the intricacies  of horror genre in a much more socially aware context than I could ever, so if you're confused about the link, just play the audio file posted on the MIR page.

Human-Cyborg Relations

As I promised, this post will be mostly about cyborgs.

    How far(or close?) are we to creating the 6 million dollar man? or the bionic woman?  A lot closer than tv and movies have told us.

More like the 60 million dollar man

    There have been successful 'bionic' prosthetics for humans for years and it appears to be getting better every year. The idea is that robotic muscles can be attached to the spinal cord or nerves and can thus be controlled by thinking about moving the limb. The technology is there, people that lose limbs now have the possibility of reviving lost functionality. Bionic limbs aren't even overly expensive as suggested in the Economist, although building a fully functional cyborg, would be a different story, the pentagon has been spending 50 million to 100 million dollars on bionic prototype research.

     
   A more obscure and significantly less practical science with the use of cyborg technology is the use human limbs on an actual robot. In theory it seems like it would be straightforward, much like the technique used in bionic limbs, a robot can just connect wires in a way that transmits a signal to the limb's nerve pathway and there it is! The human limb is now part of the collective. It would obviously be more intricate than that, but nothing a calculating computer mind couldn't overcome. Fortunately for us, this isn't as much of a reality as robots don't have the means to begin harvesting our body parts. It does, however, make a great scary antagonist in Star Trek.


 Thinking of the human body as a mechanical process brings to my mind one of my favorite short stories that I've read recently by the infamous H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West: Reanimator. The main theme of the story is about the conflict of modern scientific view of the human body versus the concept of the soul. In it the doctor Herbert West and his obedient assistant research the process of chemically bringing alive the recently dead.One of the more grisly experiments, which eventually led to the doctor's impending doom, was one in which he severed and revived separate limbs to prove that each limb can operate independently from the main body.      

You can hear an audio file of the tale here from my favorite podcast of all time, the Monster Island Resort, hosted by Miguel Rodriguez.

With this kind of segway, there can only be one kind of science to investigate in the next post. -'Till then!

The life of a space plasma

Hi friends!

So after re-watching one of my favorites, Virus, I'm left with two more questions.

The Drej are pure energy!

1) Is there possibility for a sentient form of life to exist that has no physical body and is comprised of energy? This kind of fantastical life-form was the main antagonist in the movie and it is a reoccurring theme in a lot of sci-fi. Beings like these like to especially pop up in Star Trek and Stargate. 

and

2) Perhaps an easier question: what is the viability for robots to successfully utilize human or otherwise animal parts? I know we've been experimenting with different kinds of robotic prosthetic parts in people, can that same process be reversed for the monster in Virus or for the Borg in Star Trek?

But can robots do this?

We can do this

First I want to post about the first question, of energy based lifeforms, before I get into the real meat that is cyborg part replacements.

Plasma is what you see in lightning

  Energy based life-forms are a common alternative to crafting aliens with a creative physical appearance in science fiction for several reasons. Energy beings are generally god-like beings with a lot of impressive powers. In Star Trek, they often transport spaceships to other parts of the universe or have some kind of social experiment trial planned for the crew. In Stargate, the characters uncover secrets left behind by an ancient advanced race of beings that have conveniently transcended to a higher, energy plane of existence creating an ethical debate on the existence of an afterlife. 

Now for the science. There is some evidence to support the idea for inorganic material to behave life-like in the plasma state. When an element is subjected to extremely high temperatures it becomes a super-critical fluid also known as plasma, which has peculiar characteristics. Plasma is formed inside of stars and terrestrially as lightning among many other phenomena that are really common in space and a lot more common than the necessary environment for life as we know it. Laboratory experiments with plasma have yielded similar qualities to that of a single cell organism. Grains of dust can form a helical structure similar to DNA and an ionic bilayer is formed creating a closed membrane. Spheres of plasma can even duplicate themselves much like a cell would, by splitting in two.

Amoebas in Space! All  thanks to plasma.

Okay, so maybe tiny plasma 'cells' can be made in a lightning bolt on earth, but can they evolve into into lifeforms as complicated as the carbon based life that we know?  Some people theorize that there might be plasma organisms that are somewhat similar to the carbon based organisms we know of but we just can't detect them. This sounds a bit more on the fiction side, though.

From what it seems like to me and the lack of helpful evidence of a kind of sentient or otherwise intelligent life form based on plasma, plasma based life wouldn't be more complex than a simple bacteria floating through space without magical powers or abilities that are so depicted in science fiction. I would buy into the structure being a starter for carbon based life forms as Tsytovich speculates with his research, but not its own life highly evolved plasma life form.

-'Till science proves I'm wrong!

Artificial Intelligence and Robots!

Living robots would probably be friendly, right?

 Some scientists think that the most plausible form of silicon based life would begin with the creation of artificial intelligence and its control over manufacturing of other computers. This would allow machines to carryout organized life functions that would define it as being alive( the ability to react to surroundings, reproduction, metabolism etc.).

The idea of robots have been around for a long time, even long before the invention of computers. They can be friendly, loyal to a fault but they can also rebel and with enough of them, dominate humans. The unknown possibilities of A.I. create a lot of awe among people who are uncertain of new technology and is a great conflict-causing force for sci fi.

They are humanities greatest  companion for the future

Or its destroyers

 From what I know of biology, and as Ben Clark mentions above, if a A.I. were to be able to reproduce it would have to spread like any other organism. It would need to preserve its own survival and growth before it can start to be friendly towards humanity(unless of course they were still under our control). Unfortunately, the strain in resources would almost certainly lead to conflicts if they rebelled.

Are you serious? 

 The biggest problem with a machine take-over (and the scariest) is the sterilization of life forms to make room for an abiotic system of metabolizing resources. Since machines only need a supply of metallic compounds to make their parts, any stretch of land with useful resource production would get mined out and anything living there would probably be burned as fuel. We could hope that maybe they'd follow in the footsteps of The Matrix and keep us alive for the sake of getting electricity from our brains, but I don't think it'd take long for the A.I. machine overlord to realize that we aren't really the most energy efficient organism to sustain, even if they make us eat each other.

  The A.I. could try to be more cohesive to its biological environment and adapt biological systems for converting energy for use by eating stuff, or fix all their problems with a solar energy collection like photosynthesis, which would probably be the most effective.

uhhh?... what did  I drink last night?

  One of my favorite examples of a robot take-over is depicted in the film Virus(1999) starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland (and one of the Baldwins, I think). When a glob of cosmic radiation which is appears to be some kind of sentient alien is transmitted into a high-tech Russian robotics ship (for some reason they thought it would be smart to build robots in the middle of the ocean). In any case, the robots get the shock they needed to become  rebellious A.I machines and start killing everyone on board. The best part is that its found out that the robot overlord of the ship is actually using human parts to help make better robots, like Frankenstein versions of The Terminator. The only real plus to having human parts, other than to look like scary zombies, would be the extra supply of temporary building parts that might have better water resistance.    

Anyway, its on youtube if you wanted to check it out. Its definitely better than "Lifeform."

It is very reminiscent of the Borg from Star Trek, which I think will be the topic of my next post, robot and human hybrids. How compatible can biological tissue be integrated into a computer or robotic systems, how far away are we from bionic prosthetics?

-'Till then!    

  

Invader (part 2)

In my last post I wrote about one of my favorite movies as a kid, "Lifeform" (more widely called "Invader")and about how the creature in the movie was an organism based off of the element silicon instead of the carbon that is the primary building block of life here on earth. Here I will try to break it down the possibility of silicon life and how it fits in with the martian creature from the movie.

Silicon is a similar element to carbon, it is a metaloid (having both organic properties and metallic properties) element that has four valence electrons like carbon and can then form just as many molecular analogs as carbon.
 This idea has been present in science fiction since the early 1900's and is famous for creating aliens that look like big rocks, like the infamous Horta from Star Trek. This idea for the Silicon based alien is the more established form that people have thought it would take, because of silicon's use in building materials like clay and cement as well as its rock-like properties in nature.

 This is directly contradictory to the martian in "lifeform" as it is more fluid and animal-like when it chases its victims in the military base. This issue is addressed in an this Q & A done by NASA. This could be an indication of the progression of the new uses of silicon as a semi-conductor material in things like computers and electronics that are becoming more common and versatile now than in the time of Star Trek and are consequently being more common in science fiction.  

Another example is demonstrated in this BBC video about the possibility of Silicon based life.

As the video suggests, there is an issue of carbon "out-competing" silicon as the primary basis of life on the planet and it needed to be "locked away" and unable to be accessed. This is one of the main problems with  silicon based life becoming successful, there is more carbon in the universe and carbon is a lot more versatile at forming many different kinds of molecules. As it turns out in practice and in nature, silicon is a lot less stable building block for making large, complicated bio-molecules. Silicon just wouldn't ever get the chance to make great lifeforms with carbon around being all efficient with making great lifeforms.

This implication is answered for in the movie, where it is found that the martian only uses basic chemical reactions, one example being the digestion of gunpowder to react with sulfur in order to provide energy for a battery-like organ that stores it. Carbon based organisms store energy in lipids that have to be broken down in order to release the energy which is comparably more complicated than utilizing a battery. Instead of having a respiratory system that gives all the cells in your body energy, the martian from the movie likely uses a kind of circuitry system that doesn't require the ability to absorb oxygen through breathing.

There's a car battery in here someplace

Batteries and circuitry? This thing is starting to sound like a robot. With our technology creating smarter machines, it doesn't seem all that implausible that artificial intelligence is possible. If this martian creature can somehow evolve bio-electronic systems it might also be able to evolve a kind of AI brain.

How could an organism like this evolve? Silicon is the only known element besides carbon to create large enough molecules to support genetic material, so it could very well evolve through genetic offspring.While being an asexual creature would be a bonus in that it guarantees offspring, it doesn't provide a very easy way of genetic variability which is essential to evolution, unless it was possible to do both like an earthworm.

and that's my take on the martian guy from the obscure tv movie "Lifeform," it has reasonable plausibility provided that there isn't a lot of carbon around. If you're interested in learning more about some of the facts about silicon based life, here's my references.

The Encyclopedia of Science
 PNAS(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)
NASA Astrobiology Institute

--'till next time y'all!