Symbionts and Symbiotes in Star Trek and Stargate

I have been watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 on DVD once again and my favorite character is Dax and the Trill in general. The way the Trill live their lives is more Buddhist in nature due to the many hosts that live to pass on their particular symbiont. The symbiont has its own brain and is capable of living a very long life that passes on the memories of each previous host to the next. The joining of these two separate entities is willing and even coveted by the Trill host with many years of preparation and training taken in order to be joined. In DS9, even though the character Jadzia Dax is only 28 years old, she also considers herself over 300 years old because of the experiences and memories from Dax, the symbiont. As a viewer, I enjoy the idea that my memories and life experiences could live on well into the future, unfortunately, I don't have a symbiont!
These peaceful symbionts are quite a contrast to the diabolical Goa'uld in Stargate SG1 who forcefully take a host and desire to conquer all worlds in the galaxy and make all humans their slaves. There are even different ranks of these evil symbiotes with the System Lords being the top ranked ones. The Tok'ra are a small group of Goa'uld who believe in only joining a willing host and help the humans fight their evil counterparts. The symbiotes of Stargate speak with a strange voice and occasionally let the host speak when convenient but basically control the host and make all decisions.
If I had to choose, I would be a Trill because the host is completely in charge of his/her life and uses the memories and experiences of the symbiont. So I could have the memories of a biologist, archeaologist, mother, father, son, daughter, well you get the picture; the experiences would be vast and unique.
I love that science fiction can make me ponder about the possibilities in my own life and how I can make my own memories and experiences as unique as possible.

Do you live in the Real World?

There are days when I feel as if I am living in a science fiction novel. I do not mean that people have been "body snatched" or I see flying saucers landing on my roof, although, one day a neighbor told me a UFO had landed on his roof and the last I had heard of him was that he is in a mental institution, but I digress.
What I see are distinct groups of people who appear to be living in alternate realities. In my line of work, I have the opportunity to talk with all kinds of people and the current economic crisis has amplified the differences in the way people see the world.
There is one group of people who say the economic crisis is fake because they are doing just fine in their lives and they don't know what all the negative news is about. It is as if they have closed their eyes to what is going on around them.
The other group of people I have encountered have lost everything: jobs, houses, cars, etc. For them, the crisis is very real.
The other group of people I talk with own their homes, have jobs and cars but know this crisis is not a fantasy because they are willing to see that stores have closed, "For Rent" signs are everywhere, empty houses and tent cities are real.
It is interesting to me to see how some people distort reality for whatever personal reason they may have. They seem unaware or unwilling to accept certain situations and to be truthful with themselves.
I think it is best to be as aware as possible of all situations in life and especially these troubled times and even though I love to escape for a while into my science fiction world, I also know when I need to be aware of reality.

Science Fiction - Science Fact

I love this video so much I thought I would share it with you. It is true as is stated in the video, a lot of scientists are science fiction writers themselves. Often times, people do not associate creativity with science, but creativity in combination with a solid knowledge of scientific principles can lead to astounding advancements in science and extremely creative science fiction works.
Enjoy the video!

Astronauts finish Hubble repairs.

WOW! What an amazing job the astronauts did by performing five full days of repairs to the now 19 year old telescope. Working in those big clunky space suits must be no easy task and trying to do very refined tasks such as installing data circuit boards must also have been troubling because you don't want to snag your space suit on the edge of the board!

From the article:
"...spacewalking astronauts finished repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday and shut the doors to the treasured observatory, which will never be touched by human hands again. NASA said the revived telescope will be better than ever thanks to the astronauts' efforts and should provide even more dazzling views of the universe for another five to 10 years. "

I hope the telescope will give us even more spectacular views than ever.

"The $220 million worth of new instruments should allow the telescope to peer even deeper into the cosmos, as far back as 13 billion years. "
For that price tag I really hope it works!

You can read the entire article HERE and there is a brief video worth watching.

Could you live in space for years?

Image by TopTechWriter.US via Flickr

The launch of the space shuttle Atlantis in combination with my love for watching Star Trek on DVD has made me wonder if I could spend extended periods of time in outer space. The space shuttle will orbit the Earth for 11 days while making repairs to the Hubble Telescope which means the crew will be in that tiny enclosed space for more than a week with only brief trips outside and even so it is in a space suit. I doubt I could handle the pressure(or lack thereof) of knowing my very life depends on the equipment and its reliability. I have been watching my Star Trek:DS9 DVDs and admire the amount of time they spend on the space station even calling it home. At least they can take trips down to the planet Bajor or take a ride through the wormhole into the gamma quadrant to explore other worlds but to get there you must ride in a space shuttle (of course equipped with artificial gravity!) that is small. When I consider that airplane travel is very common place and the space inside is also confined and there is danger that could happen to the craft or yourself due to turbulance, I still fly, though not as often as before. I know that comparing and airplane to a space shuttle is quite a leap, but I am getting more at the level of comfort and familiarity we have with a plane and even though I have some degree of fear, I still fly because it is an efficient means of travel. In Star Trek, the characters have that level of comfort because they have been flying space craft for so many years and while there is risk, it is an efficient mode of travel.
The next question would be, Could I stand not seeing the sun for weeks or even months on end? Could I get used to an artifical environment to live and work in? The astronauts who live in the International Space Station could answer that question the best because they spend months at a time orbiting the earth in an artificial environment and I would think from that experience it could be learned how humans would do in deep space.
I like to muse on these types of questions because I hope one day in the future all the research into specialized technology that is developed for war could instead be developed for space travel that we could all be mentally prepared for.

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• Space Shuttle, Hubble Spotted Crossing the Sun (space.com)

Space Shuttle Atlantis Heads to Hubble Telescope

Image via Wikipedia

I have been watching the space shuttle live on NASA TV today and I still get very excited every time I watch the shuttle launch into space. As much as I love to watch my sci fi shows, I would be petrified to sit in that shuttle and launch into space and have to be eleven days in a very confined space. I do admire the courage those astronauts have as well as how smart they are! They make it look so easy but when I hear the pre-launch checks and all the details they take care of during the launch and while in orbit and the taks they must perform to fix Hubble, I am simply blown away at the complexity of it all. They must think of every scenario possible before, during, and after, launch of the shuttle. That is what pros do, however, they make an extremely difficult job, sport, or in this case, space travel, look easy. Fixing the Hubble telescope will be no easy job either and I cannot believe the telescope is 19 years old, it seems like they put it into orbit only yesterday! Where have all the years gone, yikes! That telescope has provided us with so many images that have been widely used in sci fi shows and movies and I hope it can continue to give us a unique view into to the universe.
I like to keep track of the mission at Space.com and NASA TV and you can read about the Hubble mission HERE.

Star Trek Inventions

This week I cannot wait to go to the theater to see the new Star Trek movie but I think I will bypass wearing a costume, however, if I were to sport one, I would go as a Trill my favorite character. Over at Space.com, they have a very interesting Top Ten about the inventions that can be attributed to Star Trek. I will outline a few of the top ten here:

The #10 invention: "Star Trek popularized the idea of a communicator that could instantly connect two crew members on different parts of a planet. To answer the device, you just flipped it open and started talking. Of course, everyone recognizes this device today as a cell phone."
Ok, that is pretty cool.

The #9 invention: " When Enterprise crew members became sick, Dr. McCoy was able to diagnose the problem in record time, usually thanks to his medical tricorder. Today's physicians make use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and CAT scans in much the same way."
That is a bit of a stretch for me, I mean a CAT scan is not a hand held device afterall.

Skipping to the #4 invention: "Focused Ultrasound Surgery. This surgical technique is a non-invasive way to destroy unwanted masses within the body (like uterine fibroids) without harming the surrounding tissues. I seem to recall Dr. McCoy touting the advantages of doing surgery without using knives decades ago."
Ok, again, that is pretty good, a lot of medical procedures in Trek do not involve cutting.

The number 1 invention according to Space.com:
"A robotic rover called Zoe is the first robot to remotely detect the presence of life. On a NASA-sponsored mission in the harsh Atacama desert in Chile, Zoe was able to detect life by looking for natural fluorescence from lichens and bacteria. Life detection is all the rage now; the European Space Agency will be using the Urey Life Detector on an upcoming Mars mission (see photo). These devices mimic the function of the long range sensors from Star Trek, which could detect life from unreasonably long distances."
I wish that science fiction television today would consult with real scientists like they did in the past and at the very least create a show where we believe what is going on could be possible now or in the future. That type of creativity has given way to cheap solve the crime pseudo sci fi shows I can barely stomach.

Trek Technobabble

In honor of the new Star Trek Movie that will be out this week, I found a wonderful Youtube video that is very clever in pointing out that a lot of the science in Star Trek is meant to sound fantastic but can also be very confusing because it is fiction. I love Trek because of the philosophy of peace, harmony, working to become better human beings, and the idea of exploration to expand our knowledge. I love science fiction for that reason because for me, education is the most important thing in life. Being educated helps me to think and reason about situations and draw my own conclusions as to what to do or not do as the case may be, and not depend on others telling me how I should be thinking, especially the news, but I digress. Those ideas in all of the Star Trek series and movies and the message of hope is what has made the franchise so successful in my opinion. But come on, it is amusing to poke fun at some of the silly stuff that is said now and again. This video is about six minutes long but worth it.
Enjoy!

Would you like to have a microchip implanted in your head?

Image via Wikipedia

I have been watching my Star Trek:DS9 DVDs from the beginning and enjoying them completely. They are so well made and fun to watch with a lot of color, interesting characters, and great stories. One thing that is taken for granted on the station is that everyone can communicate very easily even though DS9 is a crossroad, so to speak, and you have visitors from all sorts of worlds throughout two quadrants in the galaxy. Everyone has an implanted chip that is a universal translator and allows each person to talk with great ease. The amount of information and language data that needs to be input into those microchips would be astounding. In fact, when an unknown language is presented to the microchip, after a while, it can magically translate this previously unknown language. So, for a minute, let us consider this type of technology will be available to us in the future. Would you want such a device implanted in your head? Now add to this that the mirochip seems to analyze and make decisions on its own. This is reminiscent of Hal 9000 who never ever made a mistake yet began to make decisions that affected humans in a very fatal way. Or even more sinister, if a government could track your movements or even control your ability to earn and spend, would you still trust such an innocuous chip in your head? As it is, I feel uncomfortable with the RFID in my passport because all my data can be read within a certain number of meters, but I have strayed very far from the point which is that could I trust something that sounds so wonderful as a universal translator to be implanted in my body?
I love new technology and the improvements it can bring to our lives, but when people have not learned to live peacefully together on Earth, technology can become very dangerous. The Star Trek ideal of society is very appealing, and I like DS9 because it combines the Federation with other cultures that still trade or use currency, and how everyone tries to coexist.
Until we have reached that level of harmony, I think I will use my technology outside my body.