Project Hail Mary when you know enough layman science to get you in trouble when reading sci-fi:
When Rocky made the wall in the tunnel that only had a part transparent, I found it weird that Grace didn't wonder what 'transparent' means interspecies. He thought of the possibility that Eridians had a different visibility range on the EM spectrum, but he probably just didn't know enough condensed matter physics to realise on the spot that transparency is a matter of 'which part of the EM spectrum is absorbed'. I figured that Eridians would use mediums they could see through, and leave humans to choose what they could see through. Which led me to think that they see a wide range of the EM spec. Was totally not expecting them to not know EM waves at all.
It would not have occurred to me that Eridians don't know the EM spec in a million Eridian years, for two main reasons. 1) With the space so vacuum as it is, sound doesn't propagate, and I have honestly no idea how they hear stars. How do you hear a blob of massive hydrogen and helium with a wall of vacuum in between? But they had a perfectly fine astronomical map for Grace to identify the locations of their home stars in the first place. Was this ever explained because I don't remember reading about this. How do they measure Petrova lines for that matter? 2) Sound wavelength in Earh atmosphere is just way too big for any proper resolution that could possibily lead to particle physics. Even accounting for the atmospheric temperature and composition on the Eridian ship as far as I know, Eridian sound speed should be faster. But they do sort of speak in a human audible frequency range, which I do actually know, and altogether I just figured it wouldn't be enough for them to figure out particle physics, you know? And we found out about numbers of protons in elements using X-ray and whatever other scattering, so how did they do it?
I find it hilarious that Grace's major issue with Astrophage using proton collision to form neutrinos is 'mass and energy doesn't really do that'. Yes it does. My issue with it is the fact that two protons have six quarks and really three collisions, and that charge is not conserved (protons have +1 and neutrinos are neutral). My next major issue is, imagine the Feynman diagrams. Two particles going into one vertice. Jesus Christ. This is actually the first time I actually realised Grace is a biologist. Most of the things he did before that just wasn't that biology-specific.
Before I forget this is even a thing. If the pressure in Hail Mary is 40 kPa, and we need partial pressure 21 kPa of oxygen, what is the remaining 19 kPa? I assume oxygen more than that and it becomes a bit too flammable. And if the atmosphere sample that Rocky got the first time was only 50% oxygen, how does Rocky know that humans survive on oxygen, and not the other stuff (which I assume would be nitrogen)? Is Eridian atmosphere 100% ammonia? Unless that is totally not how astronomical engineering works and I apologise.
When I first read that Eridians had 5 limbs and 3 fingers on each limb, I thought immediately that they might use base 5 or base 15. In hindsight that's really stupid because I don't know any human that use base 20 except in French, and I actually don't know any human that use base 4. Probably too small for a base.
At some point we need to drop Celsius and start thinking in Kelvins. As far as ambient temperatures go, 20 degrees and 200 degrees sound drastically different. But 300 Kelvin and 500 Kelvin sound like they are the same order of magnitude, and therefore good enough for me. No big deal.
I can't believe Grace tells us the chords for 'Adrian' and not Rocky. I know just enough music to play that on GarageBand, and he robs me of the experience. Unbelievable. By the way, do you think Eridians can do movable do (as opposed to fixed do) -- you know what, forget I asked. Do they even have music if chords are already language? Do human transposition and modulation make sense to them? Is harmony universal (feels like it because music is maths and mutiples should be easy)?
Do protostomes really think it's gross when they eat if that's just. You know. What they do. It's pretty gross to deuterostomes, sure, but you know. Plenty of them on Earth, too. Never would have thought a microbiologist might have opinions on that, much less protostomes themselves.
I so should have expected that Eridians don't know relativity, because without a solid grasp on light they wouldn't know that light speed is the limit. But it caught me off guard.
I can't believe Grace said that. First of all, I think everyone who understands what wavelength/frequency is should know the range of visible light off the top of their head. Second of all, 400 nm to 700 nm is NOT a big range. It's in the same order of magnitude! It's so narrow on the grand scheme of things!
It takes three quarters of the book for Grace to actually do what he should have been doing in his career: biological engineering. I mean breeding Astrophages was his thing but it was a lot less exciting than preparing Taumoeba for nitrogen. Even though it wasn't all that exciting because I haven't the faintest idea what settings are aggressive and what not.
Stratt has no right talking about Tai Ping rebellion in China during the 1850s. I'm sorry but what do you think caused that rebellion? Invasions, duh. The two opium wars, that's why. How many people died from that and the famine from it? I'm not saying it wasn't bad because it was one of the worst civil wars in history, but famine and war started before that, as they often do before all rebellions. It was a peasant rebellion for Christ's sake (quite literally, too -- they figured Christianity came in handy).
I wondered about Eridian materials science. From their ship geometry it seems obvious that tensile strength isn't a problem. Strength, hardness and toughness are different things, and I feel like hardness really isn't the most important issue, because hard things are often brittle. Grace comments on this himself: xenonite is harder than diamond and somehow not brittle. Being brittle means that when it breaks, it snaps. Being not brittle means that when it breaks, it stretches before it fails. Being hard means that it's hard to make a scratch on the surface. Being not hard means that's easy.
Did I miss it or does Grace ever explain how to prevent Taumoeba from evolving to diffuse through glass and metal? Because I honestly have no idea what scales we are talking about here. I assumed that Taumoeba would be in microns, and glass bond length would be in Armstrongs/nm. Plastic is polymer so it varies but it's probably dense. Metal atom spacing is also in Armstrongs. I find it difficult to imagine that xenonite has bigger average atomic spacing. Sure, xenon is two rows down silicon and three rows down carbon, but you know. Not orders of magnitude different. How does that work?
Oh I finally bothered to check, but 216 = 6^3, so it'd be 1000 in base 6. I've been wondering about the initial 217m distance since I knew their base. One problem: what was Eridian length scale again? I think they'd use a reasonable whole number in their length scale.
I realised that even though I've known for like 25 chapters that Astrophage and Taumoeba have DNA and mitochondria and mitosis, I kept thinking in my head that they are prokaryotes. I feel like Grace would murder me if I've ever been in his class. In my defense I didn't learn this in English. Still.
