The Science of Avatar

The Science of Avatar

Stephen Baxter

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0316133477

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Audiences around the world have been enchanted by James Cameron's visionary Avatar, with its glimpse of the Na'vi on the marvelous world of Pandora. But the movie is not entirely a fantasy; there is a scientific rationale for much of what we saw on the screen, from the possibility of travel to other worlds, to the life forms seen on screen and the ecological and cybernetic concepts that underpin the 'neural networks' in which the Na'vi and their sacred trees are joined, as well as to the mind-linking to the avatars themselves.

From popular science journalist and acclaimed science fiction author Stephen Baxter, THE SCIENCE OF AVATAR is a guide to the rigorous fact behind the fiction. It will enhance the readers' enjoyment of the movie experience by drawing them further into its imagined world.

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Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction

The Universe Inside You: The Extreme Science of the Human Body From Quantum Theory to the Mysteries of the Brain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oldest: by the stars. Many unmanned spacecraft have carried star sensors for just this reason; out in space, surrounded by a shell of brilliant stars, it’s easy to pick out target stars by their characteristic light, and so to fix your position in three dimensions. Before any star mission becomes practical, a vast exercise will be needed in nailing down interstellar distances, star positions and velocities precisely. Work has already begun on such a catalogue of stars, with the first space

parent star of a close-in Jupiter (Jupiter has over three hundred times the mass of Earth). So suddenly we’re seeing all these planets. But what about life? It used to be thought that if it is to be liveable for creatures like us or the Na’vi, a world would have to be more or less Earth-sized, and would have to occur in the “habitable zone” of its parent’s star—orbiting at a distance from the star that would allow liquid water to occur on its surface, not too hot and not too cold, so at

programme she heads: his mind will drive a surrogate body intended to make contact with the Na’vi, natives of this world. But you’re not thinking about any of this just now. You’ve just arrived, on an alien world. What do you see? What can you hear, smell, feel? Actually, as you have your exopack mask glued to your face, all you can smell is canned air. Perhaps the sky is an odd colour, due to Pandora’s subtly different mix of atmospheric gases. Maybe there are funny-shaped clouds. You could

Jake’s brain or the avatar’s. The enormous artificial intelligences of the future, as predicted by Moore’s Law, will not be baffled by the computational size of the brain, nor, I would guess, by the challenge of decoding the brain’s many signals. It will be like managing the problem of interfacing an Apple Mac to a Microsoft PC by connecting them both up to that monster Chinese “Milky Way” supercomputer. And if brain hacking does become possible many remarkable applications open up, beyond the

ultimate destination for all life. In following the final step of Jake’s journey, from human to the non-human, Avatar has made us confront the deepest questions of our existence. But we have reached the limit of scientific speculation, and can see no further. EPILOGUE In this book we’ve followed Jake Sully’s journey from a ruined Earth to a new world, from a broken body to health and vigour, from human to the alien—from despair and cynicism, to redemption and even love. And in working

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