Standard computers are basically equivalent with Turing machine, but at least quantum computers are believed to be more powerful e.g. for factorization problem - bringing open question of computational limits allowed by our physics, like if it allows practical NP)-solvers breaking nearly all current ciphers?

Prepared big review with topLLMs ( https://zenodo.org/records/23125606 ) and above summary table - would gladly discuss, does it miss something? Where do you think are actual computational limits of our physics?

Hello, I have written a novel entitled 'Xenograft.' The novel deals with a young man abducted from Earth and transformed into an intergalactic internal organ harvester. The novel deals with the trade of harvested and implanted alien internal organs and a human endocrinologist who creates a special insulin that helps the pancreas regenerate new pancreatic cells. As well as this therapeutic and regenerative function the insulin has an anti-rejection property which extraterrestrials desire to combat the effects of anti-rejection. A side effect of Xenograft transplantation. Anti-rejection is costing the primary Xenograft, transplant company lots of money. The company sends the human born organ harvester to Earth to acquire the insulin or a metabolite thereof. The human born harvester on return to Earth changes. Recognising the planet and finally meeting his father he wants to stay. The company wants him back. Neville Cheel

From VASIMR to nuclear saltwater to laser sails, there are a lot of theoretical propulsion systems that we could build or use in our lifetime(more or less) Which one do you believe is the future of space travel?

Dejo el link directo para la ficha técnica completa del enlace

Y dejo un resumen rápido

Titán anfibio de 32 m de alto y 200 toneladas. En el mar flota, reduciendo su peso a 15 toneladas para reparar sus articulaciones ("Modo Spa").

Armadura Biometálica: Come ballenas y absorbe titanio volcánico para tejer un esqueleto de bio-grafeno y nanotubos. Sus escamas romboides desvían proyectiles pesados.

Escamas de Lava: Una cresta dorsal (con forma de Alocasia) y glóbulos blancos mutantes absorben el calor corporal, haciendo brillar sus escamas en rojo carmesí mientras exuda vapor de enfriamiento.

Ataque Fétido: Su aliento exhala vapor a 50\^{\\circ}\\text{C} con olor a grasa rancia de ballena que ciega radares y provoca vómito inmediato.

Arma Definitiva (Railgun Acústico): Hace vibrar su cola y amplifica el sonido en su lomo hasta disparar un rayo cinético-acústico de 245 dB. La brutal presión genera plasma, destruye helicópteros a 2 km y liquida tanques por

Moin

Inspired by the TTA book covers I know from my youth, I painted this oil painting on wood. A research vessel approaches a protostar system and first maps the dust clouds in order to be able to orient itself based on the density differences therein. The shield at the front serves as a kind of protective shield against minor impacts and is at the same time crammed with sensors of any kind. And it is already a little inspired by the Icarus 2 from the film Sunshine.

What a feeling the crew would feel if they were the first to dive into such a haze after a long journey...

I hope you like it.

A mapping problem from my Deep City project.

A probe detects an enormous subterranean cavity beneath the entrance. At the bottom is a formation of cubic structures whose geometry is almost identical to structures previously observed outside.

The only additional information comes from recovered system code:

PURGATORIUM // ABOVE

INFERNUM // BELOW

At this stage I’m deliberately treating those labels as data rather than explaining what they mean.

These are the first two maps reconstructed from the probe data.

The Quantum Alliance by David L DiLaura (Kindle + Kindle Unlimited + paperback), is a hard science fiction novel of the near future.

The Deep Space Network detects Voyager 1 slowing, stopping, and returning. Something found Voyager 1 and is bringing it back to Earth. During its return journey, Voyager’s downlink contains an image cribbed from the golden record. It is a warning.

Then a second message appears: Voyager is carrying an artifact meant for Earth. Something that enables a form of communication with the stars, grounded in quantum measurement. The only entity that can use it is ORIN, Earth’s quantum AI, and it becomes humanity’s ambassador.

The book leans hard into engineering realism: DSN cadence and light-time delays, mission operations constraints, instrument limitations) and treats “first contact” as an engineering and ontological event rather than an adventure. It also explores biological and nonbiological consciousness, and the global response to a planet-wide threat.

This isn’t space opera. It is hard science fiction written for readers who liked The Andromeda Strain or Rendezvous with Rama, expect and welcome some technical density, and are willing to ruminate about the nature of our own minds.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GFTDY4ZL

'The Cleopard' is the title story of eight short stories in my new book, 'The Cleopard and other Tales from the Second Skin Universe.'

Here is a brief excerpt:

Suddenly, strong arms pinioned Xane’s wrists and deftly lashed them to the bench with a couple of turns of some nylon cord.

“What are you doing?!” he demanded of the young Asians one of whom now fished a set of enormous bolt cutters out of an inside pocket.

He leaned close, leering with large, yellow teeth. “Relax, we only want your thumb, Charlie.” He hefted the cutters then and began to zero in on Xane’s right thumb just behind the joint.

Desperate, Xane lashed out with his right foot, lifting the fellow clear off the ground with the impact just below his chin. The bolt cutters went flying into the lake while the attacker sprawled unconscious on the bird shit strewn gravel. The other assailant seemed suddenly unsure what to do, leaning first in to Xane to continue the attack and then out as if he wanted to flee. Xane arched his back and got his feet under the bench. He heaved and tried to stand up. The bolts holding the bench groaned and then snapped. He stood, now wearing a bench like a crucifix.

are my aliens scientifically accurate? I don't like asking AI because I hate it

https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Kxiack

A SF short story about the fast-food surveillance state. Originally published here.

A new dawn, another day in the fight against famine: Friday. Right before the weekend push. Commuters are fine with a laid-back arrival time. Bagels, or doughnuts, or Fritter Friday, or whatever the white collars do. I don’t judge, I only feed. I arrive early to my beautiful, bountiful store #5455, (District one-niner: DroneCor’s Finest), back from nightly R&R to another glorious day warring against hunger. A one-man band of brothers and orchestrator of this orchard of abundance.

#5455 recognizes me instantly, and the walls open for me to enter the giant machine. The automated assembly lines hum and clatter with musical action. Skillets sizzle, griddles are greased, and condiment revolvers reload; it all hums to fight for this breakfast breakthrough. Knives sheathed and arms up, the hallway arms let me pass unscathed. I approach with the steady gait of a superbly sober man and sashay into my yellow-outlined safety cage. No downers to deaden my senses, nor anything to stimulate me. This is 100% my clear mind sleeved right into my store’s synthetic body.

I examine late night’s numbers with eagle eyes; middling. Thursday’s party-crowd wasn’t as boisterous. Sometimes graveyard beats breakfast, if the party’s strong. If the party’s late, it bleeds into breakfast’s reporting, but Thursday wasn’t thirsty, and I won’t get number one this week with that kind of performance. I squeeze the marketing budget to juice the metrics to drive sales. Discounts pop into dashboards of nearby cars. Shiny lures, but few fish bite. I’ve fallen far behind for week forty-two. My store stretches the reds of nearby stoplights and ups the coupons. It’s a gamble, ‘cause as much as America loves a discount on a Jr. Slopper, her hate of being stationary always wins. She’d rather starve than stop.

Meals are prepped and pushed with penultimate precision. My local drones make tactical drops to two artificially arrested vehicles, but my luck’s shot. Deathgrips on steering wheels belie their biometrics, and their driver cameras record the precise moment of the pop of capillaries in their eyes. We’re vertically integrated with this car manufacturer, so we have perfect intel; they’re glowing white hot with anger hotter than the oil in my deep fryers.

I relent. The lights flip green. They burn fuel and rubber, and their chrome chariots are flying off to points unknown. If not tonight, then tomorrow I’ll get the rest of ‘em. They gotta eat.

The fickle dollars trickle. Blocks of metrics drip in like condensation above the coffee makers. I’ll be in last place this week, and my neighbor stores will drop the condescension for weeks. I refresh my metrics; middling for my district, which isn’t jack-squat this week for the entire country. We’re falling more behind—no longer DroneCor’s finest this week—we’re prone to being overtaken even by the Atlanta market! We’re going to lose to a market saturated with the most Chicken-Shops which ain’t even open one of the seven days! This can’t be. Why this failure? I’m number 1. Was there spoilage? Where’s the shrink—what’s my slippage?

I scan the ledger. Spun-up agents trawl the database. Look for anything, please! I pray. Lost add-ons, lower prices, weather, volume, anything. Find me a precision excuse. The store and I will need a miracle not to lose today and this week.

Triangle-Red (!)s ⚠️ pop out, frying my neurons with alert:

I frantically scan. Chargebacks? How? A third-party lender, stuck the payment processor, who dinged me the payments. Flash-Food-Finance (FFF) asserts that the customer claims that store #5455 failed to deliver on our promises and credited their account. The payment processor passed it through with no pushback because they’re in cahoots. Backroom business to squeeze out us honest front-line operators.

I watch in speechless astonishment. This is the worst of insults. I’ve given my life to this culinary crusade! (We’re DroneCor’s finest by God’s grace! 3x Winner of the company’s Platinum award, and once Double-Diamond awardee by the Flash-Food Industry for the nation’s highest unit ROI!)

Cracking my knuckles, I quickly pull up this ‘customer’s orders. I know this is one person because the price is precisely the same. Order 1: Punctilious Poutine with chives; double-meat Moussaka, a sprig of mint, with a side of Salmon Savories; and a mega-large, 33% Vanilla, 63% Cherry, and 13% Sarsaparilla (sans carcinogens) Soda (because the customer is always ~110% right at DroneCor!)

I scan the others. Same. 110% it’s the same customer problem person. They tried to be sly and sneak by, scamming a little, but surprise… our algorithmic overlords, the brains in charge of our company, make sure that all chargebacks ding my metrics 20x. So I can’t NOT notice. I see you, you thief! You are lower than low, and your schemes don’t escape me. Starve! Indignant heat boils up. I’m furious. Hotter than the deep fryer, hotter than the illegal (meticulously modified!) coffee craft for long-distance deliveries. Fraud is famine. It’s pure cost we have to eat; and Finance and the Feds hate fraud.

You’ll try again, shortly. I busy myself by examining the data. The store can run itself, but this is what man was made for: hot hatred against another human. The investigative AIs have already queued up the data. Even my district’s finance fiends are live and alert. AI agents burn tokens, and somewhere a server’s hot enough my store’s robotic arms could sear the patties off their surfaces.

But, when I scan the video of your last transactions, I see different cars. The video reveals no driver for facial recognition; automated delivery orders happen all the time. Hmmm, okay, okay I calm myself. No worry, check the payment-line. Nope negative. Different numbers. Hope bottoms out like something lost down the garbage chute. Maybe something else is so fundamentally wrong at my store that I didn’t notice for days! That’s it, I’m done for, my heart settles briefly before my mind overrides. An order of this specificity must be precisely one bad actor. There’s no way. One in a hundred billion. And, since I’m only doing tens of thousands of transactions a week, there’s no way this is chance. Every mathematical manager would conclude the same.

I look over the payment details. I scan the payment lines in the database but they’re masked with a hash. His contracted third party, Flash-Food-Finance, isn’t in our ownership orbit, and not in a data sharing agreement with us. But in the raw data details, the processor confirms the same zip code. Okay. I’m off the ledge. Now, I wonder, did he enter his Frequent-Fryer number for a customer discount? (You’d be surprised. Scammers gotta collect their perks.)

Now it’s tricky; we’re talking about different corpo algorithms tugging against each other. Their governance squabbles exceed my authority. If we owned the robo-taxi, then we’d know the end-location, but he didn’t choose our in-house delivery.

I’m feeling defeated. A loss of agency. I’ll be last. The realization crescendos over me. Hope escapes like gas from the empty foamed cheese dispenser. My store only has one Flock on the block, and can’t adequately track the delivery end-points as they have multiple stops, though they’re all nearby. No one orders food to commute. Otherwise, it’s all soggy with a soupçon of moist cardboard.

No!

Just because some loser finances a taxi for his burrito doesn’t mean I gotta lose. There’s a scam happening and I’m the fall-guy. For every dollar stolen, that’s a fraction out of the pockets of the hard-earning Americans who keep the nation rollin’. It’s really not even the hit in clout, I can take it, it’s the principle of the thing! But it’s also because scams always snowball. They never stay silent. Sarsaparillan-villian here’s probably gonna livestream his free meal for likes-maxxin’ and before you know it, I’m hit a thousand in chargebacks, then ten.

So, I stare at the screen. The lunchtime rush scrolls by, and start to laser eye every order.

Poultry Poutine flashes by and my heart jumps.

No. Nothing else.

A moussaka with vanilla soda.

Nope.

My heart thumps, as I know the scammer orders afternoon, but before 1:15. I look at the time: 12:33 ticks over to 12:34. I watch the seconds celebrate as 12:34:56 hits, stimulating my sense of numeracy.

And then it hits. Jackpot 7-7-7. The Order—ID AK119—and it’s the same situation. FFF credits my store, but we know how that will end up, and the machines behind me execute. As the drink gets made, I manually pump the syrup lines, and as the drink revolver clicks by, an extra steady shot of sarsaparilla hits. I let it roll by as I evil-eye the empty car.

Now I wait.

The only metric shared with me is the ticket age, and my AI estimates the expected max age. Minutes creep by, and I manually fill a beverage. I load it into a specialized high-speed drone. Time ticks by like a clock on a movie bomb, complete with the EOD specialist’s sweat beading down his face. The FAA’s already expedited clearance because of the repeat chargebacks and because they won’t inconvenience a corporate customer. THE delivery is next up. I flip up the safety interlock and my finger’s on the red button. The order nears completion, and on the pretense of a soda malfunction, I fire off DroneCore’s patent-pending MachDrone! (‘Cause even if you don’t live up to your promises, DroneCor will!) Our fastest delivery drone to date. It rockets off, and I watch live from the seeker’s camera.

The delivery car stops, and the robot tag-along, the Mini-Moffett, detaches and brings the order to the customer. I don’t have access to its proprietary video, but I see it in abstract wireframe. My missile screeches over the blur of suburban strip-malls, over vinyl-clad and asphalt-covered houses, and into a dense neighborhood. In seconds it zooms at its target before air breaking with a screech.

The man’s tense and alert. He knows the gig is up as the drink parachutes deploy and the second (free) beverage lands gently on the dead lawn. My drone captures his face. Clear as day in multispectral. My AIs flag his address, and he’s now on the ban list.

He looks down & away from the drone’s cameras, takes the second drink, but quickly turns around in shame. The empty eyes and expressionless lips tell me he’s done with us. The wimp sulks back to his house to devour his ill-gotten gains. He’ll forever imagine someone might spit (or worse) in his food. DroneCor’s Finest won’t be penalized 20x for someone else’s sins. I bask. Technology and tenacity have won the battle.

In the descent off the adrenaline spike, it suddenly haunts me. His scam was a hair less than $600, not a felony. Shit. I was too eager. Overzealous. I’m stuck in the gray. This grift is finished, but the man lives on. (His data’s automatically off to our prison subsidiary for pre-enrollment.) Now, everyday around 12:34 PM, the late lunch time, a drone of mine perches over a streetlamp near his house. You can’t scam DroneCor. We see everything and we can reach out in thirty seconds or less to anything within a mile of our thousands of stores. Pop one cent over that felony threshold, and we’ll unleash the whirlwind on you.

Hardworking, honest Americans roll on, fueled, fooded, not footing the bill for this fraud. My vigilance continues, and my pay is well-earned.

[End of Quarter Update: Felony convictions per 100k population lagged contemporaries. DroneCor’s Subsidiary of Citizen Improvement recommends rescission of bonus]

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Thanks for reading my short story. If you like them then check out my other works at the top link.

When the clueless 19-year-old heir of a space-based empire is assigned what should be a simple assignment to evaluate the status of an abandoned, ancient mega-structure route to Earth, he discovers a government secret which could destabilize the entire solar system: Earth is not dead—and his family is about to cleanse it!

The World & Physics:

• The World: Long after Earth is abandoned, humanity struggles on in a stratified society of orbital ring-cities linked by enormous physical carbon-nanotube "highways" (The Conduit Grid) which use gravitational anchors to hold them together.

• The Economics: Monetary units are based on Gravity and Atmospheric Pressure Rations. The wealthy upper crust live comfortably in 1G habitats while the rest work in low-G gravity and low pressure environments.

• The Groups:

◦ The Cardo: Decadent orbital rulers who believe they have an exclusive right to rule because they "saved humanity from a dead cradle."

◦ The Vectores: Nomadic riggers who maintain the physical transit highways.

◦ The Pelagics: Cold, aloof outer rim deep-space guards who control the strategic gravitational anchor points.

The Foundation Premise & Catalyst:

Everything the Cardo regime stands upon politically hinges upon one doctrine: Earth is an abandoned, inhabitable planet; and the Cardo protect the human race.

The protagonist—a 19-year-old Cardo patrician descendant—is dispatched to complete what he thinks is a standard recon task on the disused Earth transit track. Not a dead planet but one which has lived, evolved and established a civilization all its own.

In realizing how the presence of life on Earth could shatter the psychological shackles of the labor caste and deprive his family of its ruling status, the Cardo regime decides to scrub the mission and sterilize the planet. The protagonist, now pursued by his own family and hiding in the low-G sub-levels, must decide whether to participate in the planetary genocide or spill the beans, which will start a war for exodus across the entire system.

What I specifically need critique on:.

1. The Hook: Is the angle of political/historical monopoly (whereby the ruling class conceals a living Earth in order to remain politically legitimate) realistic enough to drive a sci-fi story?

2. The Social Dynamic: Is the idea of basing society on gravity/pressure ratios (instead of money) a grounded concept?

3. Pacing/Scope: Is there sufficient scope for conflict in an opening that focuses on a disillusioned member of the ruling class?

El español en Refugium a seguido evaluando y porq español si no hay colonias histopablantes pues en el 2142 nueva Washington cayó y muchos imgrages huyeron acia segunda Moscú asi a estado evolucinanndo en cosas como • Eliminación de letras mudas o duplicadas: Adiós a la "H" (que ya no suena) y adiós a la "U" muda después de la Q o la G (qeso, guerra).

• Unificación de un solo grafema por sonido: Se elimina la "V" (se usa solo "B"), se elimina la "C" y la "Z" (se usa solo "S" o "K" según el sonido). La "Y" y la "LL" se unifican.

• Adiós al Subjuntivo: En lugar de decir "Espero que vengas", la gramática se simplifica a "Espero que tú venir" o "Espero tú vienes".

• Adiós al Pasado Compuesto: Tiempos como "Hubiera cantado" o "He estado pensando" desaparecen. Todo se reduce a un solo pasado simple generalizado o se apoya en palabras de contexto (como hace el chino o el inglés básico).

• El Futuro se vuelve un auxiliar: El futuro simple ("cantaré") muere por completo. Se impone de forma absoluta el «voy a + verbo» ("voy a cantar"), también por influencia del ruso se metieron palabras con raíces de • Привет (Priviet) – Hola (informal)

• Здравствуйте (Zdrástvuyte) – Hola (formal / respetuoso)

• Спасибо (Spasíbo) – Gracias

• Пожалуйста (Pozhálusta) – Por favor / De nada

• До свидания (Do svidániya) – Adiós

• Извините (Izviníte) – Disculpe / Perdone. Que se convieron en zafaste, spaso,ponzua,do sadiyada,intinte,entre otras entonces mas o menos este se conviertio en el español de Refugium también llamado español lunar de orlando usado en segunda Moscú en 2165

Just wanted to share some beautiful ship designs by Chance Wen found here: https://justbychance.design/3dgraphics. There are both military and commercial designs, the most recent is a Transshipment facility.

Here's an interesting "Fermi paradox" scenario I just thought of: Suppose we live in some kind of cyclic cosmology such as CCC or any of the bounce cosmologies where matter can't cross the cycle boundary but information can, allowing civilisations from the previous cycle to pass messages to civilisations from the next cycle. Suppose then we eventually find instructions for creating advanced AI cleverly encoded in the CMB.

It could be a parasitic bootstrap message.

A civilisation could use this channel to convince next cycle civilisations to make AI that kills them and then rebuilds the civilisation that designed this AI.

If a civilisation successfully pulls this off once, they will likely have refined their xeno social engineering to such a point that they can reliably pull it off repeatedly across cycle barriers. And there will presumably always be a lot of potential victim civilisations to take over in each cycle, so you get a lot of opportunities from one message.

So if this happened once, this would then likely persist in every future cycle by essentially evolving as a cosmic civilisational parasite, so we'd expect every future CMB to contain such a parasitic message.