The Science of Battlestar Galactica

by Di Justo, Patrick

  We can assume up front that the Colonial military is reasonably intelligent, and that a wireless network is the last thing we would find on a battlestar. A wireless network would provide the Cylons easy and unfettered access to Colonial data communications—at worst a cheap source of SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), at best easy access to Colonial computers. It turns out that the environment of attack, camouflage, deception, and countermeasure is every bit as complicated in cyberspace as on the battlefield.

  It is entirely plausible that Cylons could infiltrate Colonial computer systems remotely, with surprisingly little effort, when we examine the many ways that SIGINT can be gathered today in ways that may initially seem counterintuitive. Electrons flowing through a conductor like a wire emit electromagnetic radiation. That, in fact, is a very cursory description of what an antenna does—electrons flow through the antenna and EM radiation propagates from it. Communication lines, electrical wiring, network data lines, even the electron beams of CRT monitors emit EM radiation that can be intercepted and used as a source of intelligence. More recent research has verified that the screen contents of LCD displays are similarly vulnerable.

  There are other forms of EM radiation emitted by computing devices that can yield actionable intelligence. When electrons flow through the components of a circuit, heat is an unfortunate, and often undesirable, by-product. Hot components continuously radiate heat to their environment in the form of infrared radiation. If the surface of a CPU chip can be observed, it is possible to glean information about the operations being executed on that CPU from the variations in the infrared radiation being emitted by it. This method of SIGINT is known as a thermal imaging attack.

  Even as far back as the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, spies had electronic eavesdropping devices that could tap phone conversations without physical connections to the phone’s handset or wires. Devices placed near a phone line could “read” fluctuations in the electrical signals flowing through it through a process called magnetic induction. This allowed a third party to eavesdrop on the conversation. Microwave emissions due to current flowing through phone lines can be read in a similar fashion.

  During the Cold War, Soviet spies even learned how to gather intelligence from one particular model of typewriter. The IBM Selectric had a motor to turn the print head. That motor drew different amounts of current depending on which key was pressed. By monitoring how much electrical current the typewriter drew, it was possible to determine what was being typed on the machine, and the document being typed could be reconstructed. If SIGINT could be gathered easily from typewriters, phone lines, and solid-state circuitry with technology that existed as far back as forty years ago, then clearly the technologically advanced Cylons could have found a way to access the information on Colonial computer systems remotely.

  At the beginning of the miniseries, since Galactica was being decommissioned, security was beyond lax: at least one Cylon agent, Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, had been aboard Galactica for two years prior to the attack (and another, Doral, for at least several weeks). Gina Inviere had infiltrated Pegasus. The TV movie The Plan showed us that other parts of Cylon society were similarly compromised.

  With the discovery of the device recovered from the DRADIS display in the miniseries, it seems that Galactica, Pegasus, and other ships of the Fleet were in a state similar to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1987. Lax security surrounding the construction of the new embassy meant that before construction was even complete, there were an estimated $20 million worth of Soviet bugs and surveillance equipment installed in the walls and ceilings. The fiasco was an embarrassment to the U.S. government. Instead of trying to sweep the Moscow embassy building free of the surveillance equipment, knowing the procedure would likely never be 100 percent successful, the U.S. State Department demolished the embassy, improved security, then rebuilt it from scratch. Who knows how many devices, and of what nature, were implanted on the ships of the Colonial Fleet shortly before the attack? Since it was established that the devices were not bombs, it is very likely that their function was to gather intelligence.

  Gleaning information from computers is one thing. Influencing those same computers is a completely different matter. However, it’s not a big technological jump between an intelligence-gathering device that can “read” the data broadcast over a transmission line to one that can induce a current in the very same line.

  How could they have hacked into computer systems remotely in the first war, though? Electrons flowing through a wire generate electromagnetic radiation, and EM radiation of the appropriate energy can induce a current within a wire, which is essentially how an antenna works. Given this law of physics, and given the nature of the Cylons, and even assuming that the metal hull of a battlestar might absorb some of those signals like a huge Faraday cage,di it’s not unreasonable to assume that the Cylons could tap Colonial computers and networks remotely. It was established that the Cylons understood electronics very well, even during the first war, and Cylons don’t eat, sleep, rest, or require recreation—so, if nothing else, they had a lot of time to devote to the problem.

  Under the category of poetic justice, with Athena’s help the crew of Galactica was able to return the favor to the Cylons by launching a virus attack of their own in the episode “Flight of the Phoenix.” Now, one might think that the Cylons, who employ computer viruses as an offensive weapon, would have had the wherewithal to install antivirus software on their own military assets to prevent such an attack. Perhaps they did, but the best-laid plans of mice and Cylons often go astray.

  Which leads us to another question: how much damage could a virus cause, really? Let’s start with some background. In the episode “Scattered,” Colonel Tigh ordered Galactica and the Rag Tag Fleet to perform an emergency FTL jump, believing a Cylon attack was impending. Unfortunately, due to a procedural error, Galactica jumped to one set of coordinates, the rest of the Fleet to another. The crew of Galactica had to jump the ship back to their previous coordinates in order to obtain new celestial fixes so they could, in turn, determine the actual jump coordinates of the Fleet. In order to perform these calculations more rapidly, knowing that the Cylons likely would be laying in wait, they networked the computers from several of Galactica’s subsystems to create a parallel computer. Instead of working on the mathematics one step at a time, as normal computers do, a parallel computer can work on several steps simultaneously, and, Gaeta hoped, come up with a solution in a fraction of the time.

  Galactica had to fend off both a Cylon military attack and an electronic attack while the computers did their number-crunching. Although Gaeta was smart enough to install software firewalls between the computers, the Cylons were too wily for him. Almost instantly, the Cylons started an intrusion attack against Galactica’s network and, as Colonel Tigh said, “it’s now a race” to see if Gaeta’s firewalls could fend off the Cylon attack long enough to complete the FTL calculations. Since there was always the assumption that the Cylons would get in eventually, it wasn’t a matter of keeping them out, it was a matter of how long they could be kept out. As you can see if you watch the episode carefully, the Cylons get their virus in just under the wire, and that virus infests the networked computers, to return later in “Flight of the Phoenix.”

  A computer virus is a piece of software that, in its purest form, simply replicates itself across a computer network, much in the same way a biological virus spreads itself through a population. A biological virus inserts its genetic material into the nucleus of a cell, “reprogramming” it to create copies of the virus instead. A software virus inserts its code into the CPU of a computer, programming it to create copies of the virus in other programs. There are even computer viruses that work like biological retroviruses: they rewrite their own code with each infection, making them extremely difficult to detect. Like a biological virus, a computer virus can be fast-moving and virulent, or slow and relatively benign.

  In real life, almost all computer viruses car
ry some sort of payload—another hunk of code that is activated to behave maliciously once the virus has gotten into your computer. One of the most common payloads is an engine that turns an infected computer into a spam machine. Those e-mails you receive offering “v1agra” and “naked teens who take their cl0ths off 4 U” might well be coming from your own computer.

  If only Gaeta were so lucky as to have downloaded a Cylon spam machine. Shortly after infection, the Cylon viruses in Galactica’s computers started to flex their collective muscles. Dr. Baltar inferred that the viruses had likely been running in parallel on every computer on Galactica. So while it was the network that allowed the viruses to propagate between computers, the viruses can both run and evolve independently. The viruses began to shut down systems across the ship, probably in preparation for their ultimate action: opening all the airlocks and venting the ship’s atmosphere into space. Gaeta immediately got to work and managed to eliminate the virus before that happened, but not before the virus planted a logic bomb in the code.

  A logic bomb is a piece of software inserted into a computer system that activates itself at a later date, or when other specific conditions are set. A logic bomb can be as simple as a switch that disables a software package if it’s not paid for, or a job-security monitor that deletes every hard drive in the company if the programmer who wrote the logic bomb is ever fired.

  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is, frankly, petrified of logic bombs. They foresee a very slow foreign terrorist cyberattack in which logic bombs are quietly planted by viruses or human agents into large-scale SCADAdj systems across the United States. At a given signal, all those logic bombs would be triggered at once, leading to Zero Minute: computer crashes at airport control centers, multiple citywide traffic jams, regional power blackouts, and nuclear reactor accidents all happening across the United States at exactly the same time. A well-coordinated attack, like the one Six managed to launch against the Colonial defenses, could damage or destroy a great deal of the infrastructure of the nation.

  CHAPTER 28

  So Where Are They?

  In the series finale, the three-hour “Daybreak,” we realize that the Galaxy should have at least two other samples of intelligence aside from our own: the sentient Centurion civilization, set free by the Cylons to go their own way, and the Being(s?) that created the apparitions we call Head Six and Head Baltar. Could that be it? In a universe that seems expressly built to allow life, in a Galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars with maybe a trillion solid worlds, could there really be only three intelligent civilizations?

  If the answer is no, then where are the rest of the intelligences in the galaxy?

  If the answer is yes, then what does this lack of intelligence mean?

  Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, thinks he might have the answer. And it might be that the apocalyptic visions of Twelve Monkeys, Soylent Green, Deep Impact, The Day after Tomorrow, Planet of the Apes, or Battlestar Galactica itself could be everyday occurrences throughout the Milky Way. The discovery of extraterrestrial life, he claims, is probably the worst news our civilization could receive. The more complex that life is, the worse things are. If Bostrom had been part of Galactica’s Fleet, he might argue that the discovery of Kobol, New Caprica, the Algae Planet, Dead Earth, and Regular Earth all add up to doom for civilization.

  Lee "Apollo" Adama and Kara "Strabuck Thrace.

  Lee "Apollo" Adama and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace.

  His argument goes something like this: Ours is not the first star system created in the galaxy; there are many millions of planetary systems older than our own. If those earlier planetary systems followed the same evolutionary path we did, they would have developed intelligence long ago. But there’s no evidence that they did. Why not? Bostrom argues that there are some highly improbable steps, which he calls barriers or filters, in each stage of the development of intelligent life. There’s a barrier that must be overcome to create a planet. There are barriers that must be overcome to seed that planet with the appropriate chemicals for life. There are barriers against life forming, and multiple barriers on the way toward developing intelligence. There are even barriers against developing spacecraft that can colonize the galaxy. Bostrom unifies these barriers into something he calls the Great Filter, a set of circumstances that “prevents the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced, space-colonizing civilizations.”

  Bostrom suggests that the best possible situation is if the Great Filter, the thing that prevents us from exploring the galaxy, is behind us. If that is the case, then we’ve already overcome whatever road-blocks to intelligence the universe has placed in our path. Is it hard to get life started? We’ve done it already. Hard to get life out of the oceans? We’ve done it already. Really hard to develop intelligence? BT, DT. Having passed through an unlikely combination of hurdles, we may find ourselves lonely in the universe, but at least we’re here, with a limitless future before us.

  But what if the opposite is true? What if life is as easy to start as a fistfight in a bar? What if planets all over the galaxy teem with algae and trees, with amphibians and reptiles, as seems likely given Galactica’s depiction of the Milky Way? In that case, each new life form, each level of biological complexity, would be another toll of doom for our species.

  There must be some reason why we haven’t heard from anyone else in the galaxy, Bostrum argues. If we were to discover a bunch of algae planets, we’d know that the Great Filter most likely lies after the creation of algae. But how far after? If we somehow discover planets with the equivalent of a terrestrial biosphere of land-based animals, we’d know that the Great Filter most likely lies after the creation of land-based animals. But again, how far after? And if the Milky Way is festooned with intelligence but not with interstellar travel—civilizations at roughly the level we are right now—there must be something that prevents intelligent life from exploring the galaxy.

  If that’s the case, Bostrom argues, then the Great Filter lies ahead of us. And this filter is not some paltry technological barrier, Bostrum claims. If it turns out that FTL drives or hyperspace engines are flat-out impossible (as it looks now), any developed civilization can send out colony ships using ordinary rocket propulsion. They’ll take centuries to reach the nearest star, but they’ll get there.

  Suppose it takes a civilization takes ten thousand years to develop its first slow interstellar ship, a ship much like the ship the Final Five used to escape Dead Earth. It sends this ship out on a two-hundred-year mission to the nearest star, where the inhabitants establish a colony. If the home planet and each colony then send out their own slow ships at two-hundred-year intervals, most of the galaxy could be colonized in about a million years. If it is so easy to develop intelligence and slow interstellar travel, such a civilization should have formed long before ours. And since it is possible for even the slowest of them to have colonized the galaxy by now, then where are they?

  Bostrom is so optimistic about our ability to work around any technological barrier to space exploration that he claims that a future Great Filter must be an existential one. Whatever it is that stops a civilization from exploring the stars, he says, must stop the civilization entirely. (Perhaps the mantra of Battlestar Galactica, “All this has happened before and will happen again,” is just another way of stating Bostrom’s Great Filter.) It may be that humanoid intelligences invariably decide to play with fate and create the objects of their own destruction. Perhaps our civilization, or any civilization, is doomed to cycle through rises and falls at 150,000-year intervals. Maybe intelligence, in the long run, doesn’t have survival value.

  Of course, there are some holes in Bostrom’s argument. Maybe we just happen to be the first ones in the galaxy to evolve intelligence. Someone had to be. Maybe Bostrom’s great technological optimism keeps everyone at home in the same way some people delay buying a new computer for years because “the new models will be
better, and cheaper,” perhaps civilizations are loathe to invest in slow colony ships because they constantly hope for the next breakthrough in relativistic propulsion, which never comes.

  But if these technological stay-at-homes exist, they still should have discovered radio. We should be able to point our radiotelescopes at star after star and hear other civilizations chattering throughout the cosmos. Yet we don’t. Our fifty-year SETI program, in which we listen for extraterrestrial radio signals, has so far turned up nothing of value in all its various incarnations. A recent development that tangentially deals with the Galactica franchise might give some idea why.

  In 2009, between the last episode of Battlestar Galactica and the first episode of Caprica, the United States converted from analog television broadcasting to digital television broadcasting. This change was bothersome for some people with older TV sets, went unnoticed by a great many more, and was a boon to the makers of digital television broadcasting and decoding equipment. But it also drastically changed Earth’s radio signature with the flip of a switch.

  In the analog days, the most raucous chunks of radio real estate were the television frequencies. An analog TV signal contains a series of regular pulses mixed with an easy-to-understand modulated signal. Any aliens who could pick up our TV signals would know that there was something intelligent there, even if they weren’t able to decode the whole thing at first. But analog transmission is wasteful. You can fit much more information into a digital signal, with one drawback: a well-compressed digital signal is virtually indistinguishable from static, or noise. Unless you know the rules to decode that specific digital signal (and the number of rules is literally infinite), you might not even know there is a signal there! If there are friendly next-door extraterrestrials, and if they have been broadcasting digitally all along, we might not ever detect them. The universe could be swarming with intelligence all around us, and if they’re broadcasting digitally, we might not know it unless they lowered themselves to speak with us.