Ask the Author: Douglas Phillips
Answered Questions (17)
Douglas Phillips
All of my books are sold exclusively through Amazon. Paperbacks are available in the US, UK, Canada, Deutschland, France, Espana, Italia, Nederland, Brasil, Mexico, Australia, and India. Just go to your country's Amazon page (for example, http://www.amazon.ca) and type my name (Douglas Phillips) into the search bar. You'll see the six books in the Quantum Series, plus Phenomena and Lost at L3. For each, you can select Kindle, Paperback, or Audiobook. Thanks for reading!
Douglas Phillips
There are currently five books in the Quantum Series, six if you count the Prologue (Quantum Incident)! But I'm not the kind of author who pumps out a new book every few months just to keep a series going. Any new book needs to be relevant to the series, or it stands alone. Stay tuned, there might be or two more tales to be told.
Douglas Phillips
Goodreads gives authors some control over book listings, so I have corrected the Quantum Entangled listing. Good catch! They scrape new titles from Amazon. I just checked, and they have included Quantum Chaos. It's here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Unfortunately, they also attribute books to me which I didn't write, but their system for removing those from my author page doesn't seem to work anymore. So, if you see an anime-manga calendar (!) or anything about Christian parenthood under my name, just ignore it. :-)
Unfortunately, they also attribute books to me which I didn't write, but their system for removing those from my author page doesn't seem to work anymore. So, if you see an anime-manga calendar (!) or anything about Christian parenthood under my name, just ignore it. :-)
Douglas Phillips
If only I had a $2 billion particle accelerator and a coherent neutrino beam, I could answer this through experimental data. Alas, I'll have to go full theoretical on you.
At places in the stories, a character (often Nala) will talk about "spatial compression" or setting a compression direction. I picture this as an arrow in 3-D space, a vector. Point anywhere, expand into 4-D, and (within your experimental chamber) space along your chosen vector will compress by a factor set by Tau (see the equation in Quantum Space). In Quantum Void, alien portals do the same thing by creating a compression vector between two doorways. Simpler, but presumably there's some heavy technology involved!
And if you'd like to find out how far you can compress space (to another galaxy?) you'll enjoy Book 5 in the series, Quantum Chaos, coming summer 2023.
At places in the stories, a character (often Nala) will talk about "spatial compression" or setting a compression direction. I picture this as an arrow in 3-D space, a vector. Point anywhere, expand into 4-D, and (within your experimental chamber) space along your chosen vector will compress by a factor set by Tau (see the equation in Quantum Space). In Quantum Void, alien portals do the same thing by creating a compression vector between two doorways. Simpler, but presumably there's some heavy technology involved!
And if you'd like to find out how far you can compress space (to another galaxy?) you'll enjoy Book 5 in the series, Quantum Chaos, coming summer 2023.
Douglas Phillips
A good question. Alas, I have no References section in any of my books primarily because they're novels. You know... fictional. But I can point to science books (written by real scientists) where I pulled some of my ideas. For example, I first fell in love with the idea of extra dimensions of space from Rudy Rucker, who wrote a superb book in 1985 called The Fourth Dimension. I also love any physicist who has a knack for explaining the deepest ideas of our universe, like Max Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe), Brian Greene (The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes), and Sean Carroll (too many books to list, but his latest is The Biggest Ideas in the Universe). As for Fermilab, I've only been there once but I had the opportunity to speak with several particle physicists in person - pure joy! If there's anything in particular you'd like to know more about, just contact me at [email protected], and I will be happy to respond!
Douglas Phillips
Great question. Book 3, Quantum Time, has the same main characters you may remember from the first two books (Daniel Rice, Nala Pasquier, Marie Kendrick, Zin the android, and a few others) but it’s an all-new story that grabs your attention right away (okay, so I’m biased). No need to re-read the others unless you want to! So yes, a stand-alone sequel, though there are a few references to prior events. As the title implies, book 3 is all about time. Hope you enjoy it. And when you’re done, you can read book 4, Quantum Entangled!
Douglas Phillips
I love this question. I've thought about first contact with an advanced civilization most of my life, read lots of sci-fi, and learned all I could from astronomers and life scientists. The idea of a gatekeeper (a standard first contact point who represents a consortium of advanced civilizations) made sense to me, but any gatekeeper would need to be a combination of a security fence, worthiness filter, welcome committee, and teacher wrapped up in one - thus an all-purpose AI seemed more likely than a biological individual.
Spoiler alert. Core's "birth" was never mentioned in the books, but it has probably fulfilled the gatekeeper role for millions of years - a steady, sure way of introducing new members to the consortium. Offsetting Core into a bubble of 4D space provides the technology filter for new members - you can't communicate with Core until you've learned how to compress space. Likewise, Core can avoid the light speed limit, because it also can compress a chosen direction in 3D space to almost nothing. But Core can't possibly know in advance where all the civilizations might live. 3D space is big and searching every possible planet is a task too big even for a moon-sized cybernetic AI. Thus, Core waits patiently until it detects 4D activity somewhere in the galaxy, then sends a test to that location to find out if whoever is stirring up space is worthy!
As of this writing, there are 4 books in the Quantum Series. I'm pondering a 5th for 2023.
Spoiler alert. Core's "birth" was never mentioned in the books, but it has probably fulfilled the gatekeeper role for millions of years - a steady, sure way of introducing new members to the consortium. Offsetting Core into a bubble of 4D space provides the technology filter for new members - you can't communicate with Core until you've learned how to compress space. Likewise, Core can avoid the light speed limit, because it also can compress a chosen direction in 3D space to almost nothing. But Core can't possibly know in advance where all the civilizations might live. 3D space is big and searching every possible planet is a task too big even for a moon-sized cybernetic AI. Thus, Core waits patiently until it detects 4D activity somewhere in the galaxy, then sends a test to that location to find out if whoever is stirring up space is worthy!
As of this writing, there are 4 books in the Quantum Series. I'm pondering a 5th for 2023.
Douglas Phillips
I pretend to be retired, but then another idea occurs and I'm yanked back to the keyboard (by forces beyond my control). I'm currently writing an oh-so-fun sci-fi comedy (publication around Feb 2022). I'm also stewing on an idea for a 5th Quantum Series story. If that one goes forward, it would publish in 2023. Join my email list and I'll keep you informed! Glad you enjoyed the previous books!
Douglas Phillips
It's the non-intuitive weirdness of quantum physics that makes for a story that's both accurate to known science and fun once the speculation begins. Neutrinos that easily pass through anything, undiscovered force bosons, extra dimensions of space and time - who could ask for a better playground of the mind? Glad you enjoyed the first book. There's more!
Douglas Phillips
Great question! Here’s the short answer:
The Big Bang started with a period of inflation where physical space grew faster than light speed. Ever since, the universe has been expanding and the pull of gravity hasn’t been enough to slow it down. Yet. Picture a runaway train car careening down the track. But is the track level? Does it bend downhill? Or uphill? What ultimately happens to the train car depends a lot on the track.
The long answer, is… longer. 😊
American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered expansion in 1925 while studying variable stars at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, CA. Since Hubble’s discovery, astronomers have wondered: will it expand forever? If so, the universe will get colder, darker, and larger over trillions of years (and infinitely more). But there’s a flip side to that thought: could gravity (which pulls all matter together) slow this expansion over time? That’s the uphill train track metaphor. Perhaps gravity could even reverse the expansion, resulting in the Big Crunch? As recently as the 1990s, no one knew, but they were clever enough to figure out how to answer the question. It boils down to accurately measuring the Hubble constant (H, a measurement of expansion) and the gravitational constant (G, which Sir Isaac Newton derived). Insert those two measurements into Alexander Friedmann’s equation for Critical Density ( ρc = 3H2 / 8πG ), and you’ve computed a theoretical density of matter where the push of expansion exactly balances the pull of gravity. If the overall density of our universe happens to be this value, the expansion that began with the Big Bang will slow and eventually stop altogether (the level track). No Big Crunch (which requires gravity to win the battle), but no infinite expansion either.
So, does our universe fit this concept? Measurements of the cosmic microwave background made by the WMAP and Planck missions say, yes, it does. Actual density = critical density = 9.47 x 10-27 kg/m3, which is about 5 atoms of hydrogen per cubic meter across the whole universe. But there’s a caveat: dark energy. No one really knows what dark energy is (or even if it really exists), but astronomers agree there is something out there that seems to be accelerating the expansion rate. The Hubble constant might not be a constant, or if it is, there are other factors involved in the expansion of the universe. Critical density tells us the universe is flat – there’s a precise balance between the expansion (positive energy) and the gravitational force (negative energy), and because of this balance we can be reasonably sure that the universe sprang from nothing. But critical density isn’t enough to tell us if the expansion will halt or continue forever. We need to better understand dark energy, and we don’t have that understanding today.
So, going back to the runaway train metaphor, we find ourselves careening down what we measure to be a flat track. We know how we got into this situation (some fool lit a hundred sticks of dynamite back in the train tunnel, and out we popped) but we don’t know for sure what’s ahead. Given a flat track, we ought to slow down and stop, but at the moment we seem to be accelerating. So what’s going on? Astronomers are working on it. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!
The Big Bang started with a period of inflation where physical space grew faster than light speed. Ever since, the universe has been expanding and the pull of gravity hasn’t been enough to slow it down. Yet. Picture a runaway train car careening down the track. But is the track level? Does it bend downhill? Or uphill? What ultimately happens to the train car depends a lot on the track.
The long answer, is… longer. 😊
American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered expansion in 1925 while studying variable stars at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, CA. Since Hubble’s discovery, astronomers have wondered: will it expand forever? If so, the universe will get colder, darker, and larger over trillions of years (and infinitely more). But there’s a flip side to that thought: could gravity (which pulls all matter together) slow this expansion over time? That’s the uphill train track metaphor. Perhaps gravity could even reverse the expansion, resulting in the Big Crunch? As recently as the 1990s, no one knew, but they were clever enough to figure out how to answer the question. It boils down to accurately measuring the Hubble constant (H, a measurement of expansion) and the gravitational constant (G, which Sir Isaac Newton derived). Insert those two measurements into Alexander Friedmann’s equation for Critical Density ( ρc = 3H2 / 8πG ), and you’ve computed a theoretical density of matter where the push of expansion exactly balances the pull of gravity. If the overall density of our universe happens to be this value, the expansion that began with the Big Bang will slow and eventually stop altogether (the level track). No Big Crunch (which requires gravity to win the battle), but no infinite expansion either.
So, does our universe fit this concept? Measurements of the cosmic microwave background made by the WMAP and Planck missions say, yes, it does. Actual density = critical density = 9.47 x 10-27 kg/m3, which is about 5 atoms of hydrogen per cubic meter across the whole universe. But there’s a caveat: dark energy. No one really knows what dark energy is (or even if it really exists), but astronomers agree there is something out there that seems to be accelerating the expansion rate. The Hubble constant might not be a constant, or if it is, there are other factors involved in the expansion of the universe. Critical density tells us the universe is flat – there’s a precise balance between the expansion (positive energy) and the gravitational force (negative energy), and because of this balance we can be reasonably sure that the universe sprang from nothing. But critical density isn’t enough to tell us if the expansion will halt or continue forever. We need to better understand dark energy, and we don’t have that understanding today.
So, going back to the runaway train metaphor, we find ourselves careening down what we measure to be a flat track. We know how we got into this situation (some fool lit a hundred sticks of dynamite back in the train tunnel, and out we popped) but we don’t know for sure what’s ahead. Given a flat track, we ought to slow down and stop, but at the moment we seem to be accelerating. So what’s going on? Astronomers are working on it. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!
Douglas Phillips
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)
Douglas Phillips
I got this question by email and it's a good one because the book (Quantum Void) never explains! Slight spoiler alert.
First, Aastazin (Zin to his friends) couldn’t have arrived on Earth via the portal because he had to first get to Earth to build it. So, he must have arrived via the black wedge that was hanging around the lost Soyuz capsule and was later spotted orbiting Core (Quantum Space). Perhaps the wedge has a passenger compartment inside and it got very close to Earth from a 4-D perspective, so close that Zin simply stepped out on the surface. Since Zin isn’t biological, the transition from 4-D to 3-D didn’t kill him. Maybe he just materialized in NASA’s lobby at Kennedy Space Center and caused the poor receptionist to freak out? Just a theory. 😊
First, Aastazin (Zin to his friends) couldn’t have arrived on Earth via the portal because he had to first get to Earth to build it. So, he must have arrived via the black wedge that was hanging around the lost Soyuz capsule and was later spotted orbiting Core (Quantum Space). Perhaps the wedge has a passenger compartment inside and it got very close to Earth from a 4-D perspective, so close that Zin simply stepped out on the surface. Since Zin isn’t biological, the transition from 4-D to 3-D didn’t kill him. Maybe he just materialized in NASA’s lobby at Kennedy Space Center and caused the poor receptionist to freak out? Just a theory. 😊
Douglas Phillips
Glad you've enjoyed them! Three full-length novels so far, available now in e-book, paperback or audiobook: Quantum Space (book 1), Quantum Void (book 2), and Quantum Time (book 3). As of May 2019, I'm deciding whether to write a fourth book in the Quantum series or write a stand-alone book - all new topic, all new characters! If I do the stand-alone, I'll push for traditional publishing and a lot depends on interest among agents and their ability to engage with publishers. Nobody said the book business was simple! Join my mailing list (douglasphillipsbooks.com) and I'll keep you informed - and thanks for reading!
Douglas Phillips
Yes. Audiobooks for Quantum Space, Quantum Void, and Quantum Time were produced by Tantor Media and available at Amazon.com.
Douglas Phillips
Well, it's got a name: Quantum Void and a cover (see my Facebook page: QuantumSeriesBooks). I'm targeting January 2018 for publication, but I've learned that the editing process can range wildly, so no firm dates yet. The story is coming along nicely though - I hope you'll enjoy it!
I'll also write book 3: Quantum Time later in 2018.
I'll also write book 3: Quantum Time later in 2018.
Douglas Phillips
More books from A.G. Riddle and Douglas E. Richards. If Dan Brown publishes again, I'll snap that up too!
Douglas Phillips
The core concept for Quantum Space has literally been brewing for more than twenty years. I guess that's because I think about physics all the time! The plot started to take shape about two years ago while thinking about the initial scene of a Soyuz spacecraft disappearing while on reentry.
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