Sunfall

by Jim Al-Khalili

  Sarah shook her head in frustration. ‘But that’s not the issue. Your scenario will only work if the CME is moving in a straight line from the Sun, but if it spirals in from a slight angle, as it can do, then an e.m. pulse would be much less effective.’

  Deep down she felt the whole enterprise was futile. Defending Earth against a really powerful CME with electromagnetic pulses would be like standing in torrential rain and trying to stay dry under a cocktail-stick umbrella.

  The CME that caused the great solar storm of 1859 or the near miss of 2012, which – had it been ejected nine days earlier – would have met the Earth full on, frying the world’s electronics and bringing much of human civilization to a halt, would both, if they struck today, be catastrophic. With the magnetosphere in its current sorry state, civilization on Earth wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Yet no one seemed to want to listen to her. Over the following days she had tried to get this point across, but there seemed to be no political will to take her warnings seriously, while the scientists and engineers working on the project were too busy trying to solve the thousand and one other technical problems they were facing. No one wanted to accept that the plan was doomed to failure from the outset.

  What no one wanted to admit either was that dealing with CMEs was just the start. Even if this particular threat could be averted, it didn’t stop the slow but constant bombardment of the atmosphere by cosmic-ray particles from deep space, coming from all directions, which would inexorably erode the atmosphere until the Earth eventually resembled its sister planet Mars: dead and lifeless. With no atmosphere, even the oceans would quickly evaporate. Apparently, that was a longer-term problem to worry about at a later date.

  Her thoughts were now interrupted as Shireen stirred and opened her eyes. She looked a little embarrassed and self-conscious at having slept through the flight. Even though they had only met on three occasions, the two women had begun to develop a mutual bond, born out of a sense of ‘us against the world’. Sarah was still impressed with the cyb’s strength of character and unbending, principled determination, which had made her feel even more wretched about the way she had folded so compliantly to Hogan and Xu’s demands.

  Shireen had spent the past few days at a facility outside Washington, DC, run by the National Security Branch of the FBI. She had initially been questioned about her Trojan horse code, so they could shore up security loopholes before cyberhackers unearthed any more awkward revelations. Sarah had persuaded her to tell them everything as a condition for her release, and Shireen hadn’t needed too much convincing. She seemed genuinely proud of what she had accomplished, and her main concern now seemed to be ensuring her parents’ safety back in Iran. On some level, she even appeared to enjoy the admiration of her interrogators – one of them, a nerdy computer scientist, had been unable to hide his approbation.

  Sarah had been relieved to hear that Shireen was to be released without charge and that while she wouldn’t be able to fly back to Tehran just yet, she could at least come and go as she pleased. Shireen had requested that she be released into Sarah’s care for the time being.

  Shireen grinned at Sarah and she smiled back weakly, not that she had much to smile about at the moment.

  25

  Saturday, 16 February – Munich

  Despite Frank Egelhof’s exhaustion, his mind was buzzing. It was late. Had his simulation not just finished running he’d have called it a night anyway. The drive home from the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility would probably take a further hour, even around the A99 Munich ring road. At least the traffic would be relatively light on a Saturday evening.

  The computer simulations of the magnetic pulse device he’d been working on for the past seven weeks were finally running reliably, and his results looked conclusive. He was one of a number of scientists at the Max Planck involved with the MPD project, but his simulations were bound by a level of secrecy above those of his colleagues, a situation he found exhausting. He hated that he couldn’t even talk about it to his wife, Rachel. But he could see why this was necessary – his job was to determine whether the space-based device was even feasible in principle, and there were, as far as he could tell, a lot of political careers, scientific reputations and investors’ fortunes riding on his results. Removing his glasses, he stood and rubbed his eyes. He only used the glasses for desk work and didn’t feel the need to have the routine surgery. Besides, he was very squeamish about that sort of thing.

  He tapped the plasma screen to black and walked out of his office, remembering to touch the thumb pad on the handle; hearing the reassuring click of the lock, he wandered off down the corridor to the bathroom. Even though it was the weekend and very few people were around, particularly this late in the evening, he couldn’t be too careful with security.

  For days, he’d been hoping against hope that his results wouldn’t confirm what he had suspected deep down all along. But finally he knew the project was doomed to failure. He’d had his doubts from the beginning but hadn’t been allowed to voice them. Now he just felt flat. Of course, his paymasters still wouldn’t want to hear what he had to tell them, but what could he do? His simulations were unequivocal. More than ever, he was aware of the need for discretion – bad enough that the world knew that the magnetic field was dying, but how much worse would things be if people were told that one of the two hyped plans to avert disaster wouldn’t work? He just prayed that the Earth-based MPD project was still a viable alternative to the one he’d been working on.

  The basic physics behind the project was simple enough, and on paper it had initially looked to Frank like it might actually work: gigantic toroidal superconducting magnets out in space that would send out intense electromagnetic pulses timed to meet any incoming coronal mass ejections and deflect them, just as the Earth’s natural magnetic field had done for billions of years. The advantages of having the device in space were clear, and putting it at the first Lagrange point made obvious sense.

  Situated a million miles from Earth on a straight line between the Earth and the Sun, the L1 point has a very special geometric property. Normally, any body closer to the Sun than the Earth would orbit it faster – basic Newtonian dynamics – but this ignores the effect of the Earth’s own gravity. If the body is sitting directly between the Earth and the Sun, then the Earth’s gravitational pull in the opposite direction weakens the Sun’s attraction on the body and so slows down its orbital speed. At the L1 point, the orbital period of the body exactly matches that of the Earth and so it remains always sitting on the direct line between the Earth and the Sun throughout the orbit.

  Placing the MPD at the L1 point would mean it provided a permanent protective shield for any incoming CMEs from the Sun. It also had the added advantage over an Earth-based MPD that its magnetic pulses would always be directed away from the Earth so would not damage any Earth-orbiting satellites.

  His computer models were meant to show the effects of bombardment of cosmic radiation on the ceramic material of the superconducting magnets, and it didn’t look good. It was a catch-22 situation. Without substantial shielding, the magnets wouldn’t survive very long in the harsh environment of the solar wind. But the necessary protective shielding would itself then prevent the magnetic pulses from getting out with sufficient strength to stop an incoming CME. Basically, the device wouldn’t work out in space, and that was that.

  Hurrying down the flight of stairs, he looked forward to getting home. When he returned to his office he would have to send a secure email to his bosses with these latest results, then encrypt all his codes and output data files before he could leave for the night. He was one of a team of twenty computer scientists working on the MPD simulations, but right now it seemed he was the only one still in the building after 9 p.m. on a Saturday. He wondered whether Rachel would be asleep when he got home. She had been very patient with him these past few weeks as he spent increasingly long hours at work. He pushed open the door to the bathroom and walked in as the lights fli
cked on. The place smelled of disinfectant and was sparklingly clean. The evening janitor bots must have just finished their cleaning round.

  Despite the quietness of the building, he didn’t hear the man who had followed him in until it was too late. He’d unbuttoned his flies by the urinal and begun relieving himself when he was suddenly aware of a shuffle of footsteps behind him. Surprised, he turned his head to look and in so doing ensured that the first bullet entered his right cheek, exiting the front of his face and leaving behind the remains of what used to be his nose and jaw. Egelhof fell back against the urinal, gurgling with pain as blood filled his throat. This was cut short by another bullet, which passed through his left eye and into his brain. The third bullet to his head as he fell was unnecessary. He crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood and piss. The sounds of his brief cry and the three silenced gunshots were heard by no one else.

  The simple message scrawled on the note that was then pinned to his body, and which was found by the security guard doing his rounds later that evening, was a mix of English and German:

  Delaying the inevitable is pointless.

  Die Welt wird der Menschheit gereinigt werden.

  The Purifiers.

  [Delaying the inevitable is pointless. The world will be cleansed of the human disease.]

  It is one of those sad ironies that had the assassin waited just another twenty-four hours, his own sources would have been able to inform him that there was no need for this mission to sabotage humanity’s last chance of survival – that neither Frank Egelhof nor the MPD project posed any threat to their dream of letting nature take its course.

  The murder of a respected German computer scientist hardly made the news the following day. Besides, far more interesting to those at the top were the demoralizing revelations discovered on Frank Egelhof’s computer – and these were kept quiet.

  26

  Monday, 18 February – New York

  Marc pushed the chair back from the desk in his hotel room, stood, stretched and yawned. He was in desperate need of a decent night’s sleep. Evie’s birthday celebrations on Friday had been a welcome distraction from the anxiety and stress that so many were feeling these days, although it was clear that everyone was putting on an act, pretending that life was continuing as normal. The afternoon had indeed seemed a little surreal at first, especially so for Marc. For a start it felt a little weird to be just another guest – along with twenty of Evie’s friends, a few family friends and his ex-wife Charlotte’s elderly parents – in the house he’d called home for so many years. Thankfully, Charlie had been gracious and friendly towards him and he’d even managed to have a civil conversation with her partner, Jeremy, the smarmy politician.

  Most importantly, Evie had seemed genuinely pleased to see him, although he couldn’t help but notice the slightly surprised look on her face when he’d walked in, as though she hadn’t expected him to keep his promise and show up. At least the birthday present he’d bought her, an elegant gold locket on a chain, had been a success.

  ‘Oh, Dad, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘I thought I wouldn’t risk getting you anything techie or anything within VR as I know I’d probably get it wrong. And that’s despite your mum’s detailed suggestions.’

  ‘Yes, you would definitely have screwed up. But this is lovely – real Old School.’

  ‘I’m pleased you like it, not to say bloody relieved.’

  He’d hardly had the chance to chat to Evie after that for the rest of the afternoon, but the highlight of the day had been when he was leaving, one of the last to do so: Evie had given him a tight hug and had told him she loved him. He’d walked the twenty blocks back to his hotel with a spring in his step he’d not felt for many months. All too briefly, the world seemed a little brighter. But by the time he’d reached his room the usual concerns had returned, and his thoughts drifted inevitably to the plan he and Qiang were putting together.

  Qiang had arrived early the following morning and they had started their mini-research project to save the world.

  Now, over forty-eight hours later, he surveyed his surroundings. The hotel room looked chaotic. The large entertainment screen occupying one wall had been turned into an interactive display with diagrams, graphs and colourful graphics packed together and overlying each other; his king-sized bed was buried under a patchwork of sheets of paper full of algebraic symbols written in his illegible scrawl. He preferred to see his calculations laid out the old-fashioned way: writing his equations down in longhand, which of course had meant finding a store that sold paper.

  In the middle of the floor sat Qiang, immersed in his own calculations, wearing his VR visor and haptic gloves, manipulating virtual screens in mid-air, which he controlled with deft fingers. The two physicists had settled back into their old research routine, bouncing ideas around, each setting up hypotheses or mathematical arguments to be knocked down by the other – only this time they weren’t just being driven by intellectual curiosity; this time the fate of the planet was at stake. They had spent all weekend running through their equations and computer codes, only leaving the room for food or fresh air.

  Marc was relieved that Qiang hadn’t needed much persuading to keep their idea a secret until they were completely satisfied it was at least scientifically feasible. But he also knew they were in a race against time, and after the most intense and sustained effort that either man had experienced in his life, their wild plan was finally coming together – maybe even getting close enough to something fully workable. But exhausting though it was, Marc was feeling invigorated by the intellectual effort he was putting into the work. And while he couldn’t admit as much to Qiang, he was guiltily aware of a lightness of spirit and renewed sense of purpose he hadn’t had for years, despite the magnitude of the project and the grim consequences if it failed.

  He’d kept the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging outside his door because he didn’t want any of the sheets of hand-written calculations touched until he was confident that his final numbers were correct. The previous night, after Qiang had left around midnight, he’d slept on the sofa to avoid having to disturb the bed.

  Someone must have reported the three-day-long sign, however, because he’d received a visit from the hotel manager earlier in the day. He’d had to let him into the room to show him that he wasn’t engaged in anything illegal and promised that it would be ready for cleaning by the following morning.

  Marc knelt down beside Qiang and groaned at the stiffness in his knees. ‘How’s it going in there? I don’t know about you, but I am ready for a coffee.’

  Qiang, blind to the outside world, waved him away. ‘Almost finished. I promise. I’m just recompiling this fluid-dynamics code. One of the subroutines kept returning floating point errors, but I think I’ve fixed it.’

  Marc stood up again. He needed to get out, get some fresh air, maybe even go for a run. Above all, he needed some coffee. Things had finally calmed down on the streets of New York and the city was slowly returning to a semblance of normality after the demonstrations and riots of the previous week.

  Marc wandered over to the interactive screen on the wall, pretty sure it had never been used for anything like this before. He stared at the dense combination of graphs and equations. Were they ready to unveil their scheme to the world? He hoped they wouldn’t have to reopen the heated argument they’d had last night about who they would tell first.

  ‘Marc, we have to be realistic. Why do you still have issues with approaching the Chinese?’ Qiang had wanted to know.

  ‘Come on, Qiang. It has nothing to do with that and you know it.’

  ‘But my contacts in Shanghai recruited me to look into exactly this sort of idea. So, they are very unlikely to dismiss it out of hand.’

  ‘I understand that, Qiang. But please, let’s take things slowly. Let’s see if there’s even an appetite for something as outrageous as this. We need to talk to other scientists before we approach the politicians.’

  ‘And
you are convinced it has to be this Sarah Maitlin. Why? Neither of us has even met her. How do you know we can trust her?’

  ‘I don’t. But who can we really trust these days anyway?’ Certainly, as a physicist, she would understand the merits of their plan and the urgency of getting it off the ground, but more crucially, of course, she was a UN insider who would know who to take it to.

  ‘Listen, you agree that timing is crucial, right? So, I just don’t think we can afford for this to go through all the levels of bureaucracy that would mean it possibly taking months before anything even gets started. No, we need a shortcut. Someone who has the ear of those who can make a fast decision.

  ‘Why don’t we at least set up a meeting with her? If she doesn’t think she can fast-track this through her UN committee then it’s your Shanghai boys.’

  Qiang had finally been worn down rather than won over. He sighed. ‘OK then, Marc, but only provided she’s still in New York. We would need to meet her face to face. Any other way would be too risky at this stage.’

  And so, it had been settled.

  Marc wondered what Sarah thought of the MPD proposal that everyone was talking about. As far as he could see, it would, even if successful, be at best just a temporary fix – deflecting coronal mass ejections was not a permanent solution to the loss of the magnetosphere. The planet’s atmosphere would continue to be gradually eroded by the solar wind. Over time, the entire biosphere would suffocate and die. No, the only hope for humanity was to kick-start the Earth’s core again and bring the magnetosphere back to life.

  It was then that Qiang let out a quiet whoop of triumph, snapping Marc out of his reverie. He turned back from the screen. ‘OK, I’m happy with the numbers,’ Qiang said, deftly touching and swiping to one side the virtual displays floating around his head, then removed his visor and gloves. He stood up, stretched his arms over his head and turned to Marc. ‘It checks out, just like you predicted. Correcting for relativistic kinematics for the energy pulse in the core isn’t necessary.’