I love learning these answers.
Researching allows me to satisfy my natural curiosity and love of learning. On my own time, I can spend hours going through documentaries, books, and websites on any number of subjects.
In simple terms: I am a wealth of useless information.
My range of research varies greatly from the mundane (what are good eco-friendly cleaning products to use/buy), to the fan based (at one point I knew way more than I needed to about the Transformers franchise), to the bizarre (I am a proud deathling and learning about what happens after a person dies is really interesting), to the down right depressing (unsolved mysteries are heart breaking).
The need to look anything up typically starts with the phrase: I wonder...?
For example: I wonder why the English language became the garbage disposal of European Languages? This led to an entire afternoon going through a ton of websites on the English language, which led to me reading on several invasions of England that I hadn't previously known about, which led to a "brief" history on the Normandy region in France, which led to me realizing it was dinner time and I had spent half a day on research that I wasn't going to do anything with.
I don't know if you've noticed readers, but there are a lot of run on sentences in this post. Probably because that's my feeling on research. Once I start, I just go until I remember to return to the real world.
My current ear worm question is: would aliens use a different base system than we humans do to do math and are there any examples in science fiction of this happening?
Basically, we use a base 10 system (our number scales are "based" on units of 10) for most of our number systems. Exceptions are the base 12 system we use for our clocks and the base 2 system (also known as binary) used for computers. The main reason human use base 10 as the base for the majority of our number systems is because we have ten toes and ten fingers. So, by that logic, if an alien species say had 8 fingers or toes, would they also have a base 8 math system?
I can't think of any examples of science fiction where this problem arises. Not even in Star Trek or Doctor Who, which are two series I would think would explore this idea. I mean there's one episode of Star Trek where binary is super important to one alien species, but that's not as out there as my previously mentioned base 8 system (or even more arbitrary a base 17 system).
If you guys know of any examples, please let me know.
But to bring this blog back on topic, I can easily get lost doing research. I can't make a decision without first doing research on all my options. If I'm planning a trip or event, I have to look up everything before hand.
The down side is that I can become indecisive or even anxious about my research. Fun fact: there is a point where a lot of research turns into too much research. Instead of writing a good solid story, too much research can cause me to not write a single word or be too afraid of taking literary license as I might get a ton of "um actually..." emails. One of the first tips I got as a writer was to never write about trains because people who do work on trains will call you out on your inaccuracies.
So, what is the balance between just enough research, not enough, and way too much to keep a person sane?
There isn't an answer.
I'm off to discover if any science fiction movies, book, or TV shows ever had aliens use a different number system than us humans. Until next week.
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