Douglas Adams - life, the universe and a cup of tea

It turns out that science fiction fans have developed a hunger for a bit of humor in the breaks between black holes and supercomputers. This hunger is probably the fertile ground that allowed Douglas Adams to grow one of the greatest masterpieces of science fiction - 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

When you think of the science fiction genre, 'funny' is usually not the first description that springs to mind. Here and there you can find amusing bright spots but in the end, this is a genre that deals with science and technology, serious topics for the most part.

It turns out that science fiction fans have developed a hunger for a bit of humor in the breaks between black holes and supercomputers. This hunger is, apparently, the fertile ground that allowed Douglas Adams to grow one of the greatest masterpieces of science fiction - 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

Douglas Newell Adams was born in 1952 in England. He used to tell, with undisguised pride, that when he was in elementary school his creative writing teacher gave him an A out of ten for a story he wrote: the first, and the last, perfect score this particular teacher had ever given in his entire career.

This early success spurred the young Adams to continue to engage with the written word. He enrolled at the University of Cambridge majoring in English literature, and while studying he wrote plays and sketches for various theater groups, including the famous 'Monty Python'.

Adams' big success came in 1977. The BBC offered him to write a science fiction drama for radio in six episodes, at the end of each episode the Earth was supposed to be destroyed in one way or another. One of the main characters was an alien landing on Earth, and Adams was looking for a reason to explain his discovery on our planet. The solution was to turn the alien into a reporter or investigative journalist. This was Adams' opportunity to make use of an idea that had been brewing in his mind for over five years, about the ultimate travel book - an encyclopedia about everything in the universe: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

Below is the gist of the story: Arthur Dent, a fair and boring Englishman, discovers one morning that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass road. In his efforts to prevent the destruction, he discovers that Ford Perfect, his best friend, is actually an alien from a planet somewhere near Beetlegoose, and that the entire Earth is about to be destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Ford, it turns out, is a roving reporter for the guide. Ford and Arthur manage to escape from Earth just before the explosion, and later meet three more central characters to the plot: Zapod Biblebrooks (the president of the galaxy and Ford's half-uncle), Tricia McMillan or 'Trillian' for short, (also a former Earthling) and Marvin, the paranoid robot . The plot follows this odd bunch as they try to decipher the answer to life, the universe and everything else, while Arthur tries to arrange himself a normal cup of tea.

Adams did not see himself as a technological futurist or prophet, but as someone who conceived ideas based on existing technological developments. Adams was undoubtedly a man of technology: a gadget freak, computers and any piece of electronics he could lay his hands on. No wonder, then, that Adams combined in his books inventions and technologies based on a kernel of real science.

A good example is the "Heart of Gold" spaceship, the revolutionary spaceship. The core of the spacecraft is its unique engine, the Infinite Improbability Drive. This engine allows the ship to disappear in one place, and immediately appear anywhere else we want in the universe. Adams here made a clever use of one of the strange phenomena of quantum theory. To understand the principle of operation of the improbability engine, you have to go back to the beginning of the twentieth century.

One of the famous debates in physics was the debate about the nature of the photon: is it a particle or a wave. The beginning of this long discussion dates back to the seventeenth century, when scientists began to deeply investigate the behavior of light. The researchers performed various experiments, such as the reflection and refraction of light rays, and sought to explain the results of the experiment using clear and unequivocal mathematical equations. But to get to the correct mathematical equation, you have to start from a certain starting point. If it is assumed that the light is a particle, a kind of tiny solid marble, the formulas take one form. If it is assumed that the light behaves like a wave propagating in space - you get completely different formulas. But it seems that the photons themselves have not decided what they prefer to be, a wave or a particle: some of the experiments were easy to explain if it is assumed that the photons are particles, but another part can only be explained if the photons behave like waves.

The discussion of this question continued even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, without an unequivocal solution. Then, as if to complicate the lives of the physicists even more, it was discovered that the electron - the small particle inside the atom - also behaves a bit like a wave and a bit like a particle.

This discovery pushed the French student Louis de Broglie to re-examine all our clear conventions about the matter in the universe. De Broglie came to an amazing conclusion: all objects in nature, everything we see around us - including ourselves - exhibit this strange duality. Even the House of the Knesset, for example, is partly a wave and partly a collection of particles. This strange theory goes against every bit of common sense in our minds, since we are used to thinking of the Knesset building as a collection of solid walls and not as an air wave, except perhaps for the offices of the retired party.

De Broglie explained that the larger the bone, the 'wavy' part of it gets smaller and its 'solid' part takes a more dominant place in its behavior. In large objects like the Knesset of Israel, the wavy part is so small that it has no practical meaning, and the 'particle' behavior is clearly expressed. In the tiny electron, on the other hand, the wave character is already much more pronounced and can be discovered in a suitable experiment.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger took de Broglie's ideas one step further.

Waves in water, radio waves in the air, sound waves - they can all be described more or less in the same way using similar mathematical equations. When I say 'describe', I mean 'predict their behavior': if the initial state of the wave is known, the wave equations allow us to predict how the wave will look in a second, a minute or two thousand years. If the electron behaves like a wave, Schrödinger told himself, then it should obey the same mathematical equations.

Schrödinger sat and thought, and finally came up with a wave equation that describes the behavior of the wave electron. Now that the magnificent equation was ready, Schrödinger realized that he had not the faintest idea what this equation wanted to say. When you put the appropriate numbers into the Schrödinger equation, you get a result - some number - but what the hell does that number mean? Does it indicate the height of the electron? its width? speed? its color? No one, including Schrödinger, could tell. The equation had to be correct - after all it is correct for all other types of waves - but correct how?

Physicists eventually came to the conclusion that the result of the Schrödinger equation is probability. In other words, if the initial position of the electron is known, the Schrödinger equation makes it possible to find the probability that in a fraction of a second the electron will be somewhere else.

It turns out that the chances are that the electron will revolve around the nucleus of the atom. Well, it's not a big surprise - we know it's there. This is an encouraging sign, because it is clear that the Schrödinger equation fits reality. The big surprise is that according to the equation, there is a chance that the electron will be somewhere else. Any other place. There is a chance, small among the small and almost impossible, that the electron will leave the nucleus of the atom and appear on the other side of the earth or even on the other side of the universe. Again, the chance that something like this will happen in reality is zero: the probability of such a jump, according to the Schrödinger equation, is very, very low. But nevertheless, the chance is there.

Let's return now to the idea of ​​Louis de Broglie, who argued that all matter in the universe - including the largest objects - behaves somewhat like a wave. The inevitable conclusion is that the Schrödinger equation is also valid for these objects, and that there is a chance that they too will disappear in one place - and then appear in a completely different place. Since large objects are only slightly wavy, the probability that the Knesset's house will disappear one morning and then appear - in its entirety, on all the members of the house - in the center of Copenhagen, say, is a small and negligible probability by any standard. Nevertheless, one can hope.

Douglas Adams took this strange phenomenon and placed it at the center of his idea of ​​the Golden Heart spaceship. The engine of infinite improbability allowed the spacecraft to behave in a similar way to the theoretical behavior of an electron: to disappear in one place, and to appear in a completely different place.

The most famous character to come out of the 'Guide' series is undoubtedly the character of Marvin, the paranoid android. Marvin the robot is another failed product from Sirius Cybernetics, whose marketing department (as described in the book) consists of 'a bunch of idiots who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.' Sirius Cybernetics has developed a new line of robotic products with feelings like the automatic doors, for example, that are happy to open for you and close behind you. Marvin is also a robot with emotions - but in his case, they are all negative. He is depressed, melancholic and cynical more or less all the time.

Giving emotions to computers and robots is the holy grail of artificial intelligence.

Paradoxically, creating emotion in robots is becoming more and more difficult as our technological capability advances. The reason for this paradox is that evolution has developed in humans very sharp senses for detecting fake emotions: like fake laughter, fake sadness or fake peace that may be hiding behind it guilt and nervousness. We are able to notice the smallest body movements and the most delicate facial muscles and deduce from them about the feelings of our interlocutor.

If we are presented with a robot that looks mechanical and artificial and attach only expressive eyes to it, we enjoy the illusion and surrender to it with ease and pleasure. A good example is ET, the friend from another star in Steven Spielberg's famous film. IT had human expressions that touched viewers' hearts - but only because the rest of his body was clearly alien and strange. If, on the other hand, we are presented with a robot that looks almost completely human, but only almost, this illusion is broken: our brain perceives this almost perfect image as a fraudulent attempt, and does not allow us to let go and connect emotionally with the robot. At the most, we will agree to choose him for the position of governor of the state of California.

Even the hitchhiker's guide itself, the small electronic device on which the words 'don't panic' are written in eye-catching letters, is a kind of 'technological innovation'. Adams believed that technology is marching us towards a real revolution in the way information is distributed in our society. In the book, those who strengthen and fill the hitchhiker's guide with content are wandering reporters - hitchhikers themselves. They are the ones who create and update the encyclopedic entries as they see fit, since the editors of the guide are on their lunch break more or less all day. Moreover, sometimes complete strangers enter the directory's publishing offices and add their own values.

The enormous popularity of Wikipedia proves that Adams was right. Ten million entries, two hundred and fifty languages, entries that appear and are updated within minutes to hours!...The days when we stood on a chair to pull out a fat volume of the Hebrew encyclopedia from the library have passed and are no more.

On May eleventh, 2001, Douglas Adams finished a physical fitness workout on the gym's treadmill. He sat down on the mat to do sit-ups. His fitness trainer went to the corner to get his towel, and when he returned he found Adams writhing on the floor, the result of a massive heart attack.

Douglas Adams died at the age of only 49. He was buried together with his towel, and the world lost a writer who undoubtedly could have made many more great contributions to human culture. The fans of Douglas Adams celebrate in his memory, every year on the XNUMXth of May, the 'International Towel Day'. On this day, his fans walk around with a towel wherever they go, drink a pan-galactic blaster glass in his honor or tea (depending on the circumstances) and wait for the Vogon spaceship to destroy the Earth - or at least hope to catch a particularly successful ride.

The article is taken from the programMaking history!', a bi-weekly podcast about science, technology and history.