I predict we’re going to look back at the release of the original, Swedish Let the Right One In as the vampires’ artistic high point.  I also predict that the release of the American version will mark the end of the whole bloody, sexy craze.

So what’s next for fans of the undead?  Zombies.

Anticipating public demand for a government response to the growing threat, mathematicians at the University of Ottawa have published an epidemiological model of an outbreak of zombie infection. [viaTalking Squid]

This comes just a few months after the Boston Police confirmed via Twitter that they would promptly inform the public in the event of a zombie attack.  [via Consumerist]

And we’re just one month away from the release of the new Woody Harrelson movie Zombieland.  I’m telling you, people.  Zombies.

Even though my perfectly reasonable request to DISCOVER’s powers-that-be for a small research fund to investigate these machines was mysteriously refused (it’s all office politics here), I still felt obligated to try them out on your behalf, loyal readers, so I pulled up a chair and stuck in my hard-earned.

In operation, both machines work pretty much like any other modern slot machine–insert money to buy credits, select how many lines you want to bet on, along with how many credits you want to bet on each line, press the button, and away you go. What makes them different are the little themed events that happen whenever you win on a line, with sound effects and video from each franchise. Interestingly, for two new machines, both of them are firmly rooted in the classic Star Trek and Star Wars of 40 and 30 years ago–there’s no Next Generation, or Phantom Menance, here, which says something about the staying cultural power and nostalgia factor of both original franchises.

Of course, it wasn’t long before both machines had eaten all my credits, plus any and all additional credits I had won along the way. So, on the one hand, yes, these machines are designed to sucker science fiction fans into spending more money than they would on a generic slot machine. For example, I expended a lot of credits (albeit penny credits) on the Star Wars game because I really wanted to hit the bonus round where the Death Star mounted in a plastic bubble above the screen lights up and spins around to determine the payout.

On the other hand, realistically, you’re not going to win big in Vegas. The house always wins. So, if you’re not getting your entertainment dollar’s-worth out of the gambling process itself, don’t spend your money. When a fan plays one of these machines, they’re probably getting vastly more entertainment per cent than a person playing at one of the generic slot machines. To us, on some level, if it’s accompanied by a little video of Han Solo uttering one of his trademark laconic quips, a 10-credit combo payout is worth more than a bland 50-credit bonus. Other slot machines promise the chance of winning mere money–these machines give you Scotty and Kirk and Jawas and Darth Vader as well. Who can complain about losing the wager of a few dollars for that?

Incandescence follows two narrative threads: that of two bored citizens of the Amalgam, a conglomerate of civilizations that fill the Milky Way’s outer disc, and two nascent scientists who live deep in the galaxy’s inner bulge, an area that has been pretty much a no-go zone for the Amalgam for countless millennia. The nascent scientists, Zak and Roi, live in pre-industrial world (known as The Splinter) that is so bizarre that it’s initially hard to see how such a place could exist within our universe. But their world is threatened with disaster, and (aided by some of the very features that make The Splinter so bizzare) Zak and Roi find themselves pushed to discover that scientific jewel in the crown, the General Theory of Relativity. This is a tall order to pull off for a novel, both in terms of making it logically possible and in terms of creating a story that you will want to keep reading. Egan manages it though, and Incandescence sets a new bar for hard science fiction.

Egan is uncompromising about the science, and in places the discussion of various experiments can be a little tough to follow, not least because Egan insists on using Zak and Roi’s terms for the various directions that exist on The Splinter — instead of things like left/right, inward/outward, or even +x/-x, there is garm/sard, rarb/sharq and shomal/junub. But if you really want to get your teeth into it, Egan has built an incredibly detailed accompanying web site that explains much of the science and mathematics (although as I noted last week, General Relavitivity, which incorporates the effects of things like gravity, is a much tougher beastie, conceptually and mathematically, than Special Relativity, which deals with the simpler case of uniform motion and is largely accessible with high-school math and physics). There are a few spoilers on Egan’s site, so you may want to wait for at least few chapters in before turning to it, but it does contain an interactive simulation of the Null Chamber, a zero-gravity region of The Splinter. The simulation allows you to perform many of Zak and Roi’s experiments and see the counter-intuitive results for yourself without having to troop all the way to the galactic bulge. If you’re interested in thinking about just how weird the universe can be, and yet still be recognizable as something of a piece with our own experience, check out Incandescence.

Carter, not the most technical of men, had to learn the equations in order to have chance at stopping a runaway time-loop. The equations looked familiar, so I checked in with Kevin Grazier, Eureka‘s science advisor, a JPL researcher, and a panelist on DISCOVER’s “Science Behind Science Fiction” Panel at this year’s Comic-Con. It turns out that Kevin actually wrote the equations, borrowed from a real class he gives that touches on the theories of special and general relativity. The equations refer to how time behaves in Einstein’s relativity theory, in particular, the phenomenon of time dilation. The neat part is that pretty much anybody who finished high school can master the math and science behind special relativity’s prediction of time dilation (as the title of this post says, if Carter can do it, so can you!).

Time dilation occurs noticeably when a object is moving close to the speed of light: imagine a spacecraft shooting by the Earth. From the point of view of someone standing on Earth, time dilation means that time is running slowly onboard the spacecraft. A second on the spaceship could be equal to an hour on Earth. (Time dilation has been experimentally verified using subatomic particles and particle accelerators, but the principle is the same.) The key is this one part of the board, which I’ve highlighted.

See that bit? The triangle followed by the symbols t’ is read as Delta. t’ (pronounced t-prime) represents time on board the spaceship. Delta is used to mean “change in” in a lot of scientific equations. Delta-t-prime then is the measured time on board the spaceship. Delta-t (without the prime) is the measured time that is passing on Earth.

The factor used to convert between Earth time and spaceship time is the complicated-looking fraction with the square root symbol underneath the delta-t-prime. This is the time-dilation factor, and it’s the core of special relativity. The only variable in this factor is v, the velocity of the spaceship. The other symbol, c, stands for the speed of light in a vacuum, which is a universal constant. Using this factor, you can work out for yourself just how fast a spacecraft has to be traveling so that one second of ship time equals one hour of Earth time (it works out to 99.999996 per cent of the speed of light).

Working out the time dilation factor from special relativity’s first principle, which was Einstein’s assumption that the laws of the universe do not change because you are moving relative to some object, requires only a little physics (if you understand that distance equals rate times time, you’re there), and some high school algebra. A little more work gets you to one of the biggest equations in science: E=mc2. There are tutorials which will step you through the process: I recommend this one, and this one. (General relativity, which deals with accelerating objects in addition to those moving with a constant velocity as in Special Relativity, is a whole other ball of wax, and requires some serious math, alas) I really recommend you try working through the time dilation derivation: at the end you’ll have grasped for yourself one of the most elegant and important elements of modern science and really understood it in the way that scientists do, instead of just through the kinds of wordy explanations that journalists like me fall back on when discussing relativity.

1. This is the Rocket Equation, formulated by the father of rocketry, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the late 1800′s. The equation describes how much of a speed boost a rocket can get — the boost is proportional to the velocity of the gases being shot out of the rocket’s engine, and is also affected by the ratio between the initial fueled weight of the rocket and its final empty weight (including payload). This ratio is why rockets are built with the most lightweight structure possible, and are mostly fuel when they take off. It’s also why many rockets have multiple stages—throwing away an entire piece of the rocket is a great way to reduce weight.
   
2. To fully describe a black hole you need no-holds-barred Einsteinian General Relativity, which involves some very tough math indeed. Fortunately, this simple Newtonion equation can be used to describe the radius of a black hole, also known as the Schwarzschild radius (technically, this equation is only perfectly accurate for non-rotating black holes, but it’s close enough in most cases). The Schwarzschild radius marks the location of the Event Horizon: beyond the horizon not even light can escape the incredible gravitational pull of a black hole. The equation shows that the size of a black hole is directly proportional to its mass.
   
3. The Schrödinger Equation, cornerstone of quantum mechanics. (technically, this is a one-dimensional, time-independent, version of the equation). This compact expression manages to fold in a) the notion that in many environments particles (such as electrons bound in an atom) can only have very particular quantities of energy—this is the “quantum” in quantum physics— b) the idea that particles can be described using waves, and c) the role of chance in quantum theory, as Schrödinger’s equation describes only the probability of finding a particle in a given region of space. To find out exactly where a real particle might be, you have to actually go out and measure it.
   
4. This equation spells out the half-life of a radioactive substance. The half-life is the amount of time that it takes for fifty percent of a given amount of unstable material to decay into something else. Some things have insanely short half-lives—the subatomic particles that are produced in atom smashers like the LHC often have half-lives measured in minute fractions of a second— while others have half lives measured in millenia—the half-life of Uranium-235 nucleii is over 700 million years. Because half-lives are unaffected by chemical changes, they can be used as way to measure time as is done in carbon dating.
   
5. This equation describes an exponential growth curve, the kind of growth pattern that populations of disease-carrying microbes like to follow. Of course, the curve can’t go on forever—sooner or later there’s a crash that isn’t described directly by this formula, as the bug runs out of new hosts to infect.
   

Whatever it is, it features a blackboard / whiteboard / cave wall covered in equations that supposedly relate to the situation at hand. Some shows—such as Numb3rs—really try to match what’s on the board to the plot. Others just pick science equations at random, or delegate a junior props guy to scribble a grab-bag of greek letters and math symbols on the board. But can people really tell the difference? What follows are some equations (and hints) that relate to classic science-fiction scenarios — see if you can identify them. Answers and explanations tomorrow.

1. Forget no bucks—without this equation there’d really be no Buck Rogers. This is the equation that made space travel possible.
   
2. This equation puts a limit on the destructive power of one of the most awesome celestial entities believed to exist.
   
3. Even if you don’t recognize the maths, you’ve probably heard of this equation’s name in more than a few shows and movies. Essential to modern physics, it comes in many flavors—and has even appeared in a Wierd Al Yankovic video.
   
4. Important for some nuclear-weapon-related plots, this equation ultimately also provided the name for one of the most successful series of video games.
   
5. The general form of this equation pops up throughout science, but this particular version has relevance to scary plague movies.
   

Image: Screenshot from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog