Mach's Legacy

by D. W. Patterson

  “Yes sir, Dag here worked with my grandfather back then and knows all the physics and more importantly how to apply them.”

  Moor and Richter looked from Emmy to Dag.

  “Dag do you think you could do this, and quickly?” said Moor.

  “Yes, I think so. My memory of those times is still intact and I assisted Dr. Mach in all his experiments. I think the Miss is right.”

  Both men looked pleased but perturbed. Still they encouraged Dag to get started right away with reproducing the Mach Barrier which they wanted renamed Mach's Shield. Dag agreed and Emmy offered to help.

  After Emmy and Dag left the politicians discussed the situation.

  “I think we have no choice but to recognize Dag's role in Mach's Shield,” said Moor.

  “Probably,” said Richter. “But we have to do it in such a way that makes Emmy Gibbs look like the project leader.”

  “I agree the people would never stand for putting their security in the hands of an Em-based robot. I'm afraid they are still quite prejudiced against AI since the Aggie War. And with this new outbreak of hostilities they are none to inclined to change their opinions.”

  “That's true. Even though Dag is Em-based and not an Aggie the people see no difference.”

  “Then it is decided. We will use Emmy as the figurehead of this effort?”

  “I agree.”

  With the lab in shambles Dag and Emmy had to find another location. Council Chairman Richter was a great help in finding them a building in the New Hope habitat which was isolated from the rest of the population. He proposed to call it the Elias Mach Memorial Research Center.

  Dag upon hearing of the proposed location remembered it from his days as an assistant to Burgess in her detective agency over a hundred years previous. It was the same building where Elias had been held captive as his captors tried to force him to give them the secrets of his wormhole generator. Burgess and Dag had rescued Elias and that was how Elias and Burgess met. Dag told Emmy the story on their shuttle flight to New Hope.

  Then he told her about the experiments that eventually led to Mach's Shield a few years later.

  “I assisted your grandfather with the experiments you know. To start the experiment your grandfather powered up the equipment, then he formed the outer wormhole mouth. He adjusted the power and cast the inner wormhole mouth to the same coordinates.

  “At first the outer wormhole mouth looked very much like a normal mouth. Clear and spherical with an opaque quality. In the experiment it was about the size of a basketball.

  “But when the inner wormhole mouth was cast the appearance of the basketball changed. Instead of a crystal ball it darkened. Just below the surface there looked to be shadows whirling around.

  “Now it was time to test the configuration as an active shield.

  “Another small wormhole generator was set at ninety degrees to the first experiment. It was aligned so that the wormhole cast would cross the first experiment exactly where the existing spherical mouths were formed. Your grandfather had me operating that generator.

  “I was operating the adjacent console and looked into the test area and watched my generator wheel begin to spin up. Once it had achieved a sufficient angular momentum to cause the Mach effect I created the wormhole mouth. A normal crystal-like spherical mouth.

  “I heard your grandfather say, 'Now try casting the far mouth.' I touched the screen to cast the far mouth which should have appeared on the opposite side of Mach's Shield. But no wormhole mouth appeared on the far side.

  “He said, 'Try it again Dag.'

  “Again I touched the screen to cast the wormhole mouth and nothing appeared.

  “Your grandfather began to smile until he noticed that his wormhole mouths were beginning to rise. They were heading for the ceiling of the lab at a faster and faster rate.

  “Dag quench your wormhole mouth, he shouted.

  “As I applied the grounding brushes to the generator wheel loud crackling booms were heard.

  “Your grandfather did the same to his wormhole. Instead of a loud crackling there was a tremendous boom and flash of light. The brushes, which when applied against the wormhole generator's wheel grounded its charge, had vaporized. The wormhole mouths wavered as if rippling but continued their rise to the ceiling.

  “He shouted at me to get down.

  “Then I saw him rush into the lab area and pull one of the metal gratings from the drainage ditch that went the length of the lab and place one end in the grounding anchor where the metal brushes had been attached. The grate was six inches wide and about three feet in length. He dropped it so that it would contact the generator wheel and dove behind a console. Another loud boom was heard. Smoke and ozone from the electrical arc filled the air.

  “Your grandfather rose from the floor unhurt. The wheel of the generator was scarred, discolored and warped. It would have to be replaced but the wormhole mouths were gone.”

  “That sounds like grandfather,” said Emmy. “He always had a head for the proper action in such situations.”

  “Yes Emmy your grandfather never seemed to panic but always reacted to a threat with calm and determination.”

  Emmy sat a minute quiet.

  “Dag why did the barrier wormholes rise instead of sink?”

  “Your grandfather explained it as a consequence of the disrupted spacetime between the mouths and the concentration of negative energy there. The disrupted spacetime has less energy per unit than ordinary spacetime and therefore becomes less massive in a gravitational field. Couple that with the large negative energy keeping open the two wormhole mouths and the repulsive force of that energy becomes dominant. But it won't happen in space outside a gravity field.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Chapter 15

  Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science - Wormhole Generator

  A deep space fusion ship needed a revolving wheel like section to provide the crew with enough artificial gravity to perform their usual duties and eat and sleep comfortably on a long voyage. To turn it into a wormhole ship it was only necessary to add to the outer skin of the ship's wheel section the three layers needed for the wormhole generator. Even though the wheel spun rather slowly the angular momentum provided the acceleration the Mach effect of the generator needed.

  One could think of the generator as a way to lasso two regions of spacetime and “pull” them closer together. And the exotic mass was like the scaffolding of a bridge keeping the wormhole steady. Once the wormhole was established a ship, entering the near-side mouth, traveled through the wormhole dimension and out the other mouth several light years away at a speed less than the speed of light, at least in the wormhole frame of reference. None of the known laws of physics were violated by the generator, but as yet all the physics of wormholes hadn't been discovered. As with so many technologies it often happens that humans learn to use the technology without fully understanding it.

  7/7/2167

  Whitney Chamberlain Howe had spent her life analyzing the glowing globes she had discovered so long ago. Many others had also been involved. But no matter the number or their expertise no one had been able to decode the information in the globes into something understandable by human beings.

  Whitney had retired and at one hundred twelve years old knew she would never find out the information contained in the globes. The others were retired now also. And it didn't make much sense to spend one's life on such a fruitless effort. It certainly wasn't good for a new researcher's career. So Whitney would be the last investigator for a while.

  The answer would have to wait until a future when new tools or new theories came along with a new approach. Whitney wasn't discouraged though. She had pursued what she was sure was the most important discovery ever made by man and she had made a little progress. She would leave her results for that future researcher and wish him or her well.

  2/25/2644

  Dag had left on one of the fusion ships of the Centauri Assembly, Centau
ri United. They would travel far enough away in the direction of 88 Pegasi so that when Mach's Shield was deployed it would block any wormhole from Pegasi. At the proper distance the “shadow” of the shield should be able to protect the entire Centauri System.

  Meanwhile Emmy started working in the New Hope habitat creating a lab equipped to test skyrmions. Eric wanted to accompany Emmy but his mother insisted that he rest more. However, Emmy could message him and she had his electronics.

  The building was old but had held up well. It had a separate lab and control room. There were apartments, a cafeteria and a machine shop, though it had antiquated tools and would have to be upgraded.

  Although they were hopeful that Mach's Shield would be all that was needed the government felt it prudent to continue the research into the plasma globes. The Council Chairman had promised Emmy that she would have unlimited support and funds to accomplish her research. Still Emmy felt overwhelmed to be given such an important project at this stage in her career. She had really only started graduate school and now she was expected to follow in the footsteps of one of the most prominent physicists in history. Only the memory of her grandfather and how he always rose to the occasion kept her going.

  Emmy and a small crew of support personnel began cleaning and arranging the lab and machine shops. In the lab Emmy discovered one of Elias' original wormhole generators in a large tank that must have held the water bath that he used to keep the spherical generator from overheating. She also found the first model of what must have been the first firing of the wormhole weapon, a powerful plasma generator that was the progenitor of today's plasma weapons. It wasn't much more than slag now but it had helped her grandfather escape his captors. Emmy thought the two relics would make a good display in the front atrium of the building.

  As the number of personnel available to her increased Emmy left the organization of the lab to a director and focused on the experiment. The original skyrmion sphere was reproduced with its interlocking rings of superconductors and mounted as before. The equipment, including the plasma injector, was reproduced according to the original drawings. In essence everything was ready for a trial run.

  At first Emmy thought it would be enough of a success if the system simply worked without trying to control the motion of the skyrmion. The morning of the first test she thought about her grandfather and how he had always been excited not apprehensive on such days. But Emmy was apprehensive to say the least. A poor night's sleep with the experiment playing over and over in her head and what might possibly go wrong hadn't helped. The missteps seemed endless and the chances of a successful test small. Still she had to go through with it, it was more important than her worries.

  Emmy called off the checklist which each of her assistants answered in the affirmative. She then turned on the current generator which topped off the charge to the isotopics. When the charge was sufficient Emmy switched the current into the superconducting rings. The skyrmion globe rang as the superconducting rings took the currents.

  Emmy then opened the electronics monitoring program. The force vectors on the many rings of the skyrmion seemed stable. It was now time to inject the plasma made from carbon dioxide molecules. The globe glowed with a white light.

  The electronics recalibrated and began broadcasting by modulating the plasma noise. The data stream began. It looked like everything was working.

  Emmy had just about decided that the experiment was a success when the plasma seemed to be shifting its position. The data stream from the embedded electronics showed no confirmation of the position drift. Emmy hadn't made provision to control the plasma yet and decided to shut down the experiment. But before she could dump the superconducting currents the plasma ball had drifted from the scaffold and was slowly floating towards a wall of the lab.

  A loud thump was heard from the lab. On the wallscreen Emmy watched as the plasma ball encountered the wall and then the screen washed out because of the intense light coming from the encounter. Unlike Elias' lab which had been surrounded on all sides with a berm the building's wall was all that stood between the plasma and the habitat. The plasma hit the wall and roared as if a grinding machine were cutting into metal. The wallscreen adjusted to the sound and the intense light that the encounter gave off. By the time Emmy could see what had happened the wallscreen showed a perfectly round hole in the wall. The plasma ball had escaped into the habitat.

  Dag and the crew of Centauri United were at the holding position after several day's of travel at full acceleration. The wormhole generator would cast a Mach's Shield approximately thirty meters across to block any wormhole cast from 88 Pegasi. The ship had enough supplies to stay on station for a week at which time it would be relieved by another wormhole ship.

  On his way along the corridors of the crew wheel Dag was joined by the ship's doctor.

  “Dag,” said the doctor. “May I walk with you a minute?”

  “Of course doctor.”

  “Dag I haven't much training in physics but I was wondering if you might answer a few questions?”

  “Of course.”

  “How can we be sure the Beleni won't find a way to cast around the shield?”

  “Doctor, a cast wormhole is a straight-line cast. This is because the opening of a wormhole mouth at the quantum level of spacetime is ruled by topology and geometry. Essentially to get to where we want to go the far mouth has to be connected with the near mouth topologically, that means they are connected by the stretching of spacetime not by its tearing.

  “Because of this requirement we can only get a wormhole with two mouths in the proper alignment when a microscopic wormhole, churning at the quantum level has the proper geometry, and that geometry is a straight line or in curved space a geodesic.

  “Because of this not all casts are successful. In fact more are unsuccessful than successful. This is because the proper alignment along the vector we wish to travel has no microscopic wormholes.”

  “A straight line or geodesic.” said the doctor.

  “That's right.”

  “So these sub-microscopic wormholes exist in large numbers at the quantum level of spacetime and all we have to do is find one that is going our way, so to speak?”

  “In its essence your statement is correct.”

  “But Dag what is all this 'casting' about anyway?”

  “Casting is a term originally coined by Elias Mach which he used to describe the process of finding and enlarging the mouths and throat of a suitable microscopic wormhole.

  “The cast is made of negative matter or energy which repulses ordinary matter. At the mouth of a wormhole and at its throat it causes an expansion that expands the near wormhole mouth to the macroscopic size we need for passage. Then the far cast is made through the developing wormhole at the distance we desire which enlarges the throat and the far mouth to a suitable size. So by forcing exotic matter into the developing wormhole we literally create a tunnel in the wormhole dimension.”

  “Then we pass through while the wormhole is large enough.”

  “But sometimes a wormhole is closed down, how is that accomplished?”

  “It takes a good bit of power to keep the wormhole open. But to close it just turn off the source of negative energy and ordinary light and matter entering the macroscopic wormhole mouths will cause them to collapse again under gravitational attraction.”

  “I see.”

  They had reached Dag's destination, the wormhole generator control room.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you doctor?

  “No that's all, I was just curious.”

  “Very well, goodbye doctor.”

  “Goodbye Dag.”

  In the generator control room Dag had established the first wormhole mouth. Once it had solidified into a crystal like sphere he cast the smaller far wormhole mouth to the same location. The crystal darkened and shapes and waves moved beneath its surface. The shield was now ready and the monitoring of its condition began.

  The plasm
a globes had been showing up several times a day, seemingly aimed at a random target. The Captain of the ship came into the wormhole generator control room and walked up to Dag.

  “Hello Dag.”

  Dag acknowledged the Captain.

  “Dag, I've often wondered the goal of this attack. They don't seem to be focused on any one target. It seems random. Do you have any views on the subject?”

  “Captain Arley I agree it looks like a random choice of targets. But I believe there is a higher strategy in place. I'm not sure I've figured out that strategy though.”

  “The globes seem to me to be a diversion, even though they are dangerous and deadly.”

  “You may be right. If this were the brunt of the attack I would expect we would see quite a number of these globes. As many as the Beleni could manage. But that doesn't seem . . .”

  Dag stopped speaking as an alert showed on the wallscreen.

  “What was that Dag?” asked the Captain.

  Dag looked at the readout of the power meter.

  “I believe the barrier is being hit by a wormhole generator.”

  They looked to the wallscreen which showed that the barrier's sub-surface churning had intensified. And it wasn't at all like an inky black fluid now. Dag put the temperature reading in one corner of the wallscreen. It showed the surface temperature of six thousand Kelvin and climbing.

  “About ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit,” said Dag to the Captain. “Nine thousand degrees above its quiescent state. I'd say its absorbing the energy of the rebels wormhole generator as they are trying to establish a wormhole mouth Captain.”

  The Captain looked alarmed.

  “Don't worry Captain Arley we are nowhere near its limits. I believe they will have to shut down their generator when they figure out there is something blocking the wormhole mouth's formation long before we reach our operational limit.”