Project Hail Mary

When the alternative is death to your entire species, things are very easy. No moral dilemmas, no weighing what's best for whom. Just a single-minded focus on getting this project working.

Remember, it took us a century of burning coal and oil on a global scale to even notice it was affecting the climate at all.

And just like that another climate denier is born. See how easy it is? All I have to do is tell you something you don't want to hear.

Who would have thought saving the world could be so boring?

Language is kind of an exponential system. The more words you know, the easier it is to describe new ones.

"No?" I ask

"No," he says in Eridian.

"So, 'yes'?"

"No, yes."

"Yes?"

"No. No."

"Yes, yes?"

"No!"

The oldest words in a language are usually the shortest.

If you looked at a rock for several hours, and someone replaced it with a very similar, but slightly different rock, you would know.

I wouldn't want him to think humans are untrustworthy.

I mean... we're pretty untrustworthy, but I don't want him to know that.

There's nothing special about the number 10. We have ten unique digits because we have ten fingers. Simple as that.

Thinking rationally, you can't make spaceships without a civilization and you can't have civilization without being able to communicate. So of course they have language. 

"♩♫♪♪♫," says Rocky.

All I saw was "nothing," and I drew a bunch of conclusions! Conclusions that are wildly speculative and with nothing to prove them, but conclusions!

No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I'm going to go with "he" for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being "it."

I don't want to look dumb in front of the aliens.

Maybe once I explain what's happening to Earth, they'll have a solution.

Or maybe they'll board my ship and lay eggs in my brain. You can never be sure.

When European mariners first came across Asian mariners, no one was surprised they both used sails.

There's a button on-screen that just says "Course." That seems reasonable to tap, right? Famous last words.

Okay, what's a Petrovascope? Best guess: a telescope and/or camera that looks specifically for the IR light that Astrophage emit. It looks for the Petrova line via the Petrova wavelength so it's a Petrovascope and we really need to stop putting "Petrova" in front of everything.

Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can't interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That's why there's a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off.