Thomas Aquinas, Explorer of the galaxy (Thomas Aquinas series)

by Rico, J. Luis

  “We learned how to exploit LaGrange points for construction and we rushed to secure all the possible LaGrange points in Sol system. We learned how to heat and spin large metal bodies to shape them in space. We learned how to use nanotechnology to refine bodies of mixed metals into pure metals.”

  “The construction of the Nicolaus Copernicus led to many such fantastic discoveries. The ship was eventually constructed, and a crew was selected. The ship conducted a shakedown cruise through the solar system and used a gravity assist from the large Gas Giants in Sol system to whip itself out of the system forever.”

  “The Nicolaus Copernicus crew did not hibernate. They did not sleep away the years of travel. They worked on the ship. They stayed in communication with earth and endured hours, then days, then weeks, then months, then years of delay for their communications to make it to and from earth. They lived their lives as best they could. They raised families. The second generation of crew was obviously born on the ship. They were raised and trained by the crew. The ship eventually reached the half way point and flipped and began to slow down for entry into the Alpha Centauri system. The ships primitive (by our standards anyway) ion drives having exhausted half of their fuel by then. Eventually against the odds. Humankind arrived in the heliopause of a new solar system. The Nicolaus Copernicus crossed through the dynamic three-star system and achieved a stable orbit around the primary star. It took eighty-three years and four generations of colonists to do it. The first human to walk a planet under a different sun was indeed a Catholic.”

  “In 2295, Augustine Friar, Brother James “Lion” Leon Latterly famously stepped from the ground shuttle of the Nicolaus Copernicus onto the newly named Alpha Centauri system planet “New Earth” and quoted the entirety of the Lord’s Prayer. Three billion Catholics in Sol system listened to the much-delayed radio broadcast. The speed of light radio transmissions taking 4.35C years to close the distance from New Earth to the Sol system.”

  “Sol system did not sit idly by awaiting the crew of the Nicolaus Copernicus. Oh no, construction on the next generation ships were underway at the same time as the Nicolaus Copernicus construction itself. Again, crews were easy to find. The best and brightest were selected. Ships were launched. Technologies were improved and ships were able to achieve large percentages of C. Hibernation technologies were refined and made practical.”

  “By the year 2315, The Sol system asteroids were home to a billion humans, almost all Catholics. The Moon, Mars, and Mercury were fully inhabited. Dozens of other bodies, the moons in the outer system were inhabited as well. The more we grew, the more we prospered. The material wealth of the Sol system to this day is difficult to grasp in real terms.”

  By the year 2315, there were dozens of generation ships on their way to dozens of systems. The math and engineering of generation ship travel and hibernation technology did force some hard limits upon these early pioneers. There were no 1,000-year leaps. The stress on a ship and the unknowns of that much time and distance would ultimately cause a ship's systems to fail and jeopardize the mission and the crew. Ships were made doubly redundant, and then, triplely redundant on their systems.”

  “Pope Glorious the Second ordered a hard limit of fifty light years radius for the generation ships. The artificial limit still allowed for over 2,350 known systems. Nearly all with earth like planets in acceptable orbits from the primary sun in the system.”

  “Generation ships launched over a hundred years ago, in this glorious age of exploration have by and large reached their destination. A few still travel outward towards their goals. Several Muslim and one Mormon generation ships are still out there moving steadily away from the Sol system. They had no artificial limits imposed on them. It is believed that one of the Muslim generation ships has a goal of 2,000 years.” Several of the student’s gasp.

  “Long after we are all aged away and returned to dust, the Muslims in that ship will slumber away.” The Abbess chuckles. “I don’t believe it myself. For all their stubbornness over the years, even the Muslims wouldn’t bite off that much with the technology available to them at the time.”

  “Generation ships were wonderful and they allowed us to push into the comparative closeness of the stars within a fifty-light year volume. Well, really, about a thirty-five-light year volume. The practicalities of the time it takes forced a long-term perspective as well. Ships manned by a few hundred crew arrive at a new system and begin to mine their belts and asteroids to build structures and manufacturing facilities. Crew members are impregnated with stored eggs and the first generation of colonists are born. It will take a further fifty or a hundred years to reach a point these systems might consider sending out their own generation ships further into the void.”

  “Expansion into the void is economical. The material wealth discovered and put to use in the new systems is incalculable. Each new system has the same (?) amounts of metal and ice and LaGrange points. Upon arrival, the colonists get quickly to work moving into the new systems and exploiting the new wealth. By and large, they skip the planets. Who needs them! All they need is spread out in the belts and the LaGrange points. Colonies in Alpha Centauri grow and grow and grow. Within a hundred years of colonization, they send a ship back to Earth!”

  “Against the mathematical and engineering hard limits of expansion a solution needed to be found that would allow for faster travel through space. Much faster travel.”

  “Pioneering students at the University of Geneva on Earth discovered how to make and harness black holes. Having a black hole around to study is a boon.”

  “Hawking radiation is mastered by engineers. We can use it to maneuver these newly created black holes. We can move them around and study the way they interact with things. We can discover the strength and locations of black hole space time ripples. We can develop equations for the length and strengths of these ripples and begin to learn how they may be used. For the first time, we can experiment with gravity waves first hand!”

  “At the same time Engineers were plinking around with miniature black holes in Geneva, students in Ganymede University discovered the power of Entanglement. And this changed everything.”

  “Within weeks of the discovery of entangled pairs in the lab, we were creating our own entanglement and putting it to use in engineering and industry. Communicators were created that allowed for voice communication across any distance. Engineers added the ability to pass large volumes of data instantaneously to these entangled radios. The next great age of human exploration began in earnest.”

  “Entangled communication devices were spread throughout the known Sol system. When the Pope spoke mass on Mars, the rest of the Sol system could partake live. News programs were shared across the system. Knowledge and email and even the old archaic 21st century Internet communication protocols were rediscovered and put to use. This new and instantaneous communication and sharing of data across the system resulted in more sharing of engineering knowledge and powered a new Engineering age. A new enlightenment!”

  “New generation ships took the entangled communicators with them. The nature of Quantum entangled pairs allowed for instant tangled pair communication regardless of distance or speed. Special high-speed seed ships with no crew delivered entangled communicators to our distant colony systems at extremely high velocities and high gravity acceleration. Over the next hundred years, mankind rekindled our sense of exploration and wonder and more and more generation ships were constructed and sent out into the void. A generation was born that could access any knowledge from anywhere at any time. From the pocket phones and computers, they carry they can communicate with friends fifty light years distant or watch a sunrise on a planet so foreign it could never be imagined by a movie studio.”

  “Work on the black holes continued obviously. Students at Geneva University decided to push these black holes up to a significant fraction of C to study them. Strange things were observed. New math was needed to understand the relationship of absolute speed in C to th
e ripples of space time distortion around the black holes. New branches of mathematics were developed and tested and refined. New theories arose. Some of the new theories sounded truly amazing.”

  “Students and research scientists from the University spent years in the outer reaches of the Sol system toiling away in the Kuiper belt far away from anyone that would say “No!” to their experiments.” The University back on earth had enough material wealth to let the student try their experiments. And spend it they did. Large scale experiments involving relativistic black holes were carefully crafted and ultra-high speed remotely controlled craft were used. For years, all that was accomplished was the rapid destruction of very expensive hardware.”

  “A scavenger nosing around a Juniper Lagrange point found the missing piece of the Scientists equation. Monopoles. Antimatter monopoles. Very strange matter. This was the first time we had a bit of antimatter monopole to investigate and experiment with. The Ganymede University obtained the antimatter monopoles and began almost immediately studying the way it interacted with their black holes.”

  “Antimatter monopoles cannot be consumed by a black hole. By a normal matter black hole anyway. That is well known today. It was unknown then. The first time the antimatter monopoles were brought near the lab and its captured black hole it resulted in disaster. The monopoles forced the black hole out of its carefully crafted and secure Hawking radiation field and spun it free into the lab. The lab was almost completely destroyed as a result. Lives were lost.”

  “Out in a circumpolar orbit of Ganymede today you can find the wreckage of that research lab. The loose black hole and the remains of the lab are locked in orbit of each other and the moon. Their orbit is slowly decaying, and there are plans to capture the black hole before its orbit decays and destroys something truly important like Ganymede itself.”

  “Engineers immediately recognized the importance of antimatter monopoles and went to work finding more. Within a few months, we were making them in the lab. A few months later, we were making them in industrial volumes.”

  “Theories of faster than light travel were refined and with black holes and antimatter monopoles readily available, it took us thirty years to find the right way to use them. Brother Lewis and others will teach you the details I am sure.”

  “The important thing is that we toiled to completion and finished the task. Immense wealth and untold numbers of engineers worked the project for generations. Luckily for us, we have untold wealth at our disposal. Pope Glorious the Third directed all our resources in this direction. He knew the generation ships were nearing their practical limits and faster than light was the future. The theories were mastered and the engineering developed.”

  “The first manned faster than light manned journey took the lives of all aboard but proved it could work. The crew was killed by excessive radiation in the containment fields. Larger and better glass bowls were engineered. We learned how to spin thick silica glass bowls in the vacuum of space. Large centrifuges were constructed. Kilometer long centrifuges. Glass was spun as it cooled, and the engineering was perfected.”

  “The second and third and fourth crews disappeared into the void and were never seen again. Many theories were written. Many theories were investigated by experimentation. In the end, we discovered how to exit side space. We discovered how to force the closure of the bubble universe and enter the known universe. That this cost the lives of these three crews is prayerful. I myself pray to the crews of the first ships every evening in my Vespers prayers. I know many of you do as well.” The Abbess lowers her head and makes the sign of the cross.

  “The fifth and sixth ships were destroyed in a blaze of fission fusion Hawking radiation fire when they missed the entrance to side space and collided with their own black holes. Again, the crews perished. Math and theories were updated and tested in the lab and super computer simulations were run and rerun.”

  “After a generation of testing and experiments, the seventh ship was lost as well. We very nearly gave up at this point. How does one justify the continued cost in material, time, and human souls to chase this dream?” The Abbess stands perfectly still and lowers her voice. “There was a chorus of voices to end the experiments and dedicate ourselves to generation ship technology. After all, the generation ships were still being launched. They were still wildly successful. We were growing the bubble of humanity into the void further and further every day.”

  “Pope Glorious the Third died suddenly and unexpectedly. The election of the new Pope coincided with the decision to continue with the pursuit of faster than light technology.”

  “The Papal conclave of 2366 was a showdown between the two viewpoints. Conservative Cardinals favored the tried and proven expansion into the void using Generation ships. After all, the entangled radios made instantaneous communication and sharing of ideas and information possible. It was a whole new game. Colonists in systems fifty light years away were in constant communication with Sol system now. Cardinal’s favoring the new FTL technology were in the minority, but they had an extremely charismatic candidate. Cardinal Julius Himenez. He, himself, was born in the Alpha Centauri system and returned to earth in the first-generation ship to complete a return to Earth and Sol system.”

  “Cardinal Himenez became, of course, Pope Francis VIII. He swung the College his way with an impassioned plea that was televised live to all of the known and explored systems. His famous lines “If not us who? If not now, when? For the glory of Christ, we conquer!” Has been emblazoned on every new ship leaving the Sol system in the nearly two hundred years since his famous speech.”

  “The eighth ship to attempt faster than light travel, having been duly blessed by the eighth Pope Francis, successfully transited into side space for eight minutes and returned safely to our universe. The ship made a faster than light jump across a rip in the space time that immediately closed upon itself when the universe got its own math straightened out. The eight-minute trip was ended when the ship forced a telescoping Mobius strip antenna out into the nothingness and collapsed the bubble universe the ship traveled in.”

  “If you have taken Brother Lewis classes, you will know the formula. Time in milliseconds times speed in C times mass in millions of kilos equals distance in the side space.”

  “That first FTL jump went .54 light years. The ship ended up in the southern orbit end of the galaxy outside of traditionally used space. They stranded themselves a half light year away from rescue. The poorly provisioned ship sent an instantaneous communication back to the Sol system and the cheers went up. Until the reality of the ship's situation set in.”

  “The FTL ship. Our first FTL journey is a success, but we have stranded the ship and crew almost a half light year from the plane of the solar system. Engineers and scientists began to work on the problem and refined their math and their formulas from the results of the successful test. All of humanity focused on this one achievement. This one was a huge success. And all of humanity demanded we rescue the crew. And we did!”

  “Fast ships in the plane of the Solar system headed into the void with supplies to rescue the crew. The math did not work for their successful arrival in time, but men being men, they went anyway. Their multiple year's long conventional journey at high speed and high G’s to reach the farthest ends of the bottom of the plane of the system made news galaxy wide.”

  “A second FTL ship was quickly readied, a new black hole harnessed, and a new crew assembled. The ship was well provisioned and the crew was eager to jump. The engineers and scientists refined their math and theories up until the last possible moment. The ship reached a velocity of .02C expending huge volumes of water ion energy over the course of a Sol system year and three months. The black hole was released and the anti-matter gun placed in the path of the system. The black hole was forced to react, the ripples in space time reflection opened the bubble into nothingness, and the ship disappeared. Remember our formula. At a fraction of C. In this case around 215 million kilometers per
second. And at a mass of two hundred million kilos.”

  “The crew had to spend exactly three hundred minutes and seven seconds in side space. Any more, and they pass the first crew. Any less, and they never reach them in time. The crew timed it perfectly. As watched by tens of billions of humans live on entangled TV, the crew of the second ship nearly collided with the first. The ship still traveling at a significant percentage of the speed of light flipped and began to brake to match the speed of the first FTL explorers. It was tight and the math were very close. But the second successful FTL trip was a success to rescue the crew of the first successful FTL voyage. Supplies were delivered, lives were saved.”

  “In the hundred years since we have perfected the system of FTL travel and pushed the envelope of humanity to a volume of 1,250 light years in all directions. In a fifty-light year sphere from the earth, there are thousands of systems. In a 1,250-light year sphere, there are tens of millions of systems. We have reached out and into the spiral arm we call home. Plans are being made to cross the large void into the next spiral arm and even into the core of the galaxy itself. In the meantime, we have occupied a small sampling of the stars within our sphere. Yes, we have occupied the most promising. The systems with rocky planets. The systems with exploitable Gas Giants and interesting LaGrange points. The systems that look promising from our telescopes.”

  “We are finding wealth and resources everywhere we look for them. Each new system is flush with material wealth in obscene abundance. Everywhere we send the faithful, we are successful. Catholics call home to thousands of systems and are all directed by the love of and the voice of God through our Pope. Mass is said here on Earth or with the Pope on Mars and heard and loved and felt by all of our kind on these far-flung worlds.”