Time passes.
There is a squeak. Another squeak. Why is that familiar? The smell is back again. The sweet pungent aroma and taste of pine oil. The warmth is back too. His arms, his legs. His face. Emanuel tries to move again. His mind does not understand what movement is, he is still trapped in the deepest parts of his mind.
The curvature of space time is (k) is zero. This is fact. This is stated several times in the documentary. The edge of entropy, of nothingness, is just there as the universe expands into the nothingness of less than vacuum. What if there is something there? Does it have to be less than nothingness?
The squeak is back. Annoying and familiar at the same time. The smell. The warmth. Pine. Warmth. Fabric on skin. Fabric. Fabric? Where did that come from and what does it mean? A deep part of the mind that was Emanuel tries again to move.
The edge of the expanding universe contains the energy, potential and kinetic that originated in the big great bang. The super inflation. Inflation. The tape rewinds. The universe edge expands into what? Nothingness? Less than vacuum. The producer says so. The tape rewinds.
Time passes.
The squeak and thump are back. The squeak is not new, the thump is. The warmth as well. The smell of pine. The light on his face and hands and the warmth of. What? Another small part of the mind is unlocked when a tired and forgotten synapse makes a new connection. Two isolated pieces of mind can communicate. They are still many times less than the whole.
The tape is nearing the end again. The producer is discussing multiplex theory and the near impossibility of ever proving the existence of the multiverses.
The edge of the universe continues to move outward. As the sphere, near sphere of outward movement in all directions at once continues it shows no sign of slowing. Vacuum energy in the gap between stars continues to make new sub atomic particles and then destroy them mindlessly.
Time passes.
The thump. The squeak. The smell. Pine oil. Warm sun on skin. On what. Skin. Face. These things seem to be familiar, but the parts of Emanuel do not know why.
Vacuum energy. The math is straight forward. It is difficult to visualize. Virtual particles blink into existence and then annihilate each other in too short a time to be noticed. In the void between stars, and even in the stars themselves… fleeting bits of energy emerge and disappear. It is well described and the heart of Quantum field and Heisenberg uncertainty principles and theories.
The warmth returns again. Very strong. Warm. No… hot. Too hot. Someone will be a, they will burn.
The tape rewinds.
Pine oil.
Sun. Warmth.
Emanuel sits up in bed and looks at the Franciscan Monk cleaning the floor. The man has a traditional mop and bucket. “Brother, can you please close the blinds?” His voice is hoarse and ragged from disuse.
The Monk faints and hurts himself badly when he hits the floor. Emanuel rolls out of bed and flops onto the floor hurting himself as well, but he manages not too badly. His arms and legs are weak and atrophied from not being used.
He manages to crawl to the Monk and check that he still lives. Blood is pooling on the floor. Emanuel tries to cry for help. His vocal cords are terribly tender and frail from not being used. He sounds like a hundred-year-old man and not a man of 27 years. “Heeeellppp!!!” He struggles again to yell.
Within moments the room is crowded with staff caring for the Monk, and he is quickly carried away on a stretcher.
Emanuel manages to speak, and when he does it makes little sense. Or does it?
“The vacuum point energy of the void continues across universe boundaries.”
He manages to yell.
“The vacuum point energy of the void continues across universe boundaries!”
“The vacuum point energy of the void continues across universe boundaries!”
“Do you hear me? Someone write this down!” It comes to him in a rush. The damaged synapses reconnect in a flourish across his brain. The damage is not healed, but new paths are created around the damage. Within a handful of seconds, the insights come rushing and knock Emanuel back on the floor.
“Do you hear me?” The Sisters do not know what to say. This young man they have cared for so long is awake and now is yelling gibberish. They help the young man into his bed again, and then into a chair when he protests… The head of the nursing home is called. He quickly calls the head of the local University when he speaks with Emanuel. “Write this down!” Emanuel bellows through his cracked and dry vocal cords. A nurse Sister gives him a bulb of water to drink.
The Dean, when he arrives brings an astrophysicist with him. They discover Emanuel scribbling in crazy hard to read longhand, after all, he must learn to write again and control his hands again… Page after page of notes and equations. Together, the three spent over twenty-four hours discussing Emmanuel’s observations and discoveries. In two weeks every astrophysicist, Gravitational researcher, Black Hole engineer, and research scientist in the known systems will know Emmanuel’s name and his new discoveries.
The expansion of the universe is being fueled by vacuum energy fluctuations outside our own known universe. The energy to expand is self-created by forces outside our universe. Vacuum quantum fluctuations outside the boundary of our universe create vacuum pressure on the boundary and “pull” it as much as the original big bang pushed it into expansion. Now that someone has seen it and theorized it, within days, others are setting experiments to confirm it and measure it and prove it.
That forces outside our universe may interact with ours is not a new theory, but Emanuel has the math and the theory to back it up. Mankind’s knowledge of the universe takes a huge step forward.
Emanuel changes his name and takes sacred vows. He never leaves the embrace of the Catholic Church and its University again. It is all rather sensational news.
Year 2432, Catholic University, the Vatican
Brother Sebastian walks through the classroom towards the rear wall as he introduces himself.
“Students. Welcome to my class. We will discuss and discover many things about the universe around us this semester, and I am quite positive you will be impressed with my teaching methods.” He smiles generously and receives some warm chuckles from his students.
Brother Sebastian dims the lights and brings up the front wall display. “I have been with the University my entire adult life excepting the few years I played basketball and attended college in Oklahoma. The University is my life, and I love it above all other things. A miracle brought me to the University and along with it brought an advancement in our ability to visualize and explore the universe. I will share this story with you. We will laugh and love and learn. Above all, we will learn and move the marker of human knowledge forward.”
“Let us begin.” The wall illuminates rapidly and is filled with stars and then galaxies. They are in motion. It is time lapse obviously.
“We have all seen the observable universe, we have marvelous theories on how it develops, and how it expands, and how we can jump from one place to another using space time gravity ripples setup by great engineering feats.”
“I, myself, through the intercession of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, made some small discoveries in this great quest of man to understand the things we see in the night sky.”
“Men and women, more skilled and knowledgeable than us have contributed greatly to man’s knowledge as well. We understand what we see very well.”
The light drops. The room is empty and dark. A few students gasp.
“We only see 10%. Let that sink in a moment. For every bright dot of flame in the void where a type O, B, A, F, G or K class sun burns its nuclear fires. There lie ten times as many dwarf stars that we cannot see. Their nuclear fires never started or they are too dim to be seen by our telescopes. When we point our telescopes, optical, and radio at the night sky, we cannot detect them. They are far more plentiful, but they are invisible to discovery by and large.”
The ligh
ts come up and show a star on the wall. This is our Sun, Sol. And our neighboring systems. Seventeen nearby systems join the Sun on the wall. In a distance of six light years, there are 23 stars in 17 systems.”
The stars change color to blue. The new systems are added to the display. “217 known Brown Dwarves are in this same distance.” A few gasps emerge from the class.
“We have visited all of these systems. They are by and large not very exciting other than the fact they are so numerous. The dark corners of the void are more numerous by far than the bright and easily observable parts. Our Milky Way contains 525 to 560 billion solar systems. It contains ten times that number of near solar systems. Systems where the sun in the center of the system lacked enough mass to launch its nuclear fires and become a main sequence star like our Sol.”
“These systems are like any other in most respects but that one. Their sun is not a main line, main sequence star. These systems do not have a sun capable of fusing hydrogen into helium. They may, however, sustain nuclear fusion of deuterium and lithium deep within their bellies.”
“Here in Sol system, we have a near brown dwarf. Jupiter is near the mass to start its own internal nuclear fires. If it massed 66 times its current mass, it would class as a sun, and we would be a binary system. Interestingly, if Jupiter masses 66 times its current mass, it would only be 15% larger than its current size. Brown dwarves are small. And they are by and large invisible at the wavelengths we like to look for things with.”
“With the Infrared detectors, we can look for the heat energy given off by a brown dwarf and we have had some significant luck in recent years discovering them. Modern infrared telescopes and instruments catalog and discover new brown dwarfs hourly here in this University. We are adding them to the catalog of stars at a furious pace. Most of you in this room will have the opportunity to discover and name your own as soon as class is dismissed today. We have excellent resources available to student and staff alike, and I am available after class to show you how it is done if you are interested.”
The large framed man walks to the center of the room and waves his arms around the class. “Everywhere we look we find them. Everywhere. Together they make up 90% of the solar systems in the void, but they only make up less than one percent of the mass. They have planets. They have comets. They have a type of weak solar wind. They exert influence on their solar neighbors. They may have asteroid fields full of wonderful metal and water resources. Alas, they have been damn hard to find though. And when we do find them they are often confused as planets. Maybe it is hard to imagine but from a distance, it is hard to tell a large planet from a brown dwarf.”
“Brown Dwarfs are typically the same size as Jupiter. Maybe ten or perhaps fifteen percent larger in volume. They mass much more, around 66 times more on average as we just discussed. Small scale dwarves tend to maintain their shape due to Coulomb pressure. Large scale dwarves maintain their shape due to electron degeneracy pressure. I expect each of you to write me a two-page paper, cited, by Friday, on the subject of the differences in the two.” Several heads snap back in shock. And several hands begin to furiously take notes.
“Some dwarves maintain nuclear fusion for a few million years, say ten million on the high end. Then their fires are complete and they no longer radiate any new nuclear heat energy.”
“Stars are grouped in size from largest to smallest. Hypergiants, Supergiant’s, Bright giants, subgiants, Main sequence…. This is where our Sol resides… sub dwarfs, red dwarfs, white dwarfs and lastly brown dwarfs. Among the brown dwarfs, there are three classes. High mass, low mass and sub-mass.”
“A high mass Brown Dwarf will sustain fusion of lithium for a few million years and mass 65 to 150 times that of Jupiter. It is typically easier to detect. It is, after all, nearly a star and does some fusion for a short time on the galactic time scale. It will have an orderly set of planets around it or an accretion disk forming planets if it is a young system.”
“A low mass brown dwarf will never achieve fusion and may mass just somewhat more than ten times that of Jupiter up to 65 times its mass. These are very difficult to find. They emit an almost negligible amount of heat and light into the void. This is a relative thing to say and to measure. Let me explain. Large bodies. Let’s take our own Sol system. We have four planets in our system that radiate more visible light and heat into the void that they receive from our own sun. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all large and generate considerable heat that influences their local neighborhoods. There are moons on each that receive significant light and heat energy from the planet they orbit. This energy, although significant locally for the moons would be impossible for us to detect even with our modern instruments from more than a few dozen light years away. It just is damn hard to spot.”
“On the extreme small end of the dwarf scale, we have sub dwarfs, sub brown dwarf stars. These are less than thirteen masses of Jupiter. You could throw Jupiter into this class is you are a stickler and declare we have a binary system. I won’t fault you for that if you so choose. Jupiter is a damn big Gas Giant.”
“Let’s quickly summarize. Brown Dwarfs are small and hard to find. There are ten times more of them that there are other classes of star. Some researchers argue they should all be considered large planets and be done with them!”
Brother Sebastian walks around the class again, studying the faces of his students. He is a strong believer in mysticism and fate and signs. Frankly, he is a bit out on the edge of mainline Catholic dogma inside his head. Occasionally, he will make an awkward announcement about something he has dreamt of a vision he has seen while showering, and others treat him as an oddball. There is no escaping the events around his coma, and his awakening and his discoveries are the centerpieces of his life. His life will always be colored by the reality of his miracle, and he is always looking for another.
Brother Sebastian pauses alongside a particularly skinny and earnest young woman taking notes in a curious form of short hand. “Sister Jones.” He maintains her stare.
Her eyes are young and bright and inquisitive. She radiates eagerness and knowledge like no one he has ever seen before. The tunic, scapular, and cowl she wears are quite obviously the smallest sizes in the University, and they are still ill-fitting on her diminutive frame. “Yes, Brother Sebastian?” She maintains his stare.
“What does the Drake formula have to say about Brown Dwarfs?” he asks.
She nimbly stands and faces the class, at last breaking her stare. “The Drake equation doesn’t mention Brown Dwarfs at all, Brother Sebastian. When the formula was created by Drake, they were not yet discovered.”
“Very good sister Jones. What do you think of the impact of the formula and the chance of life, intelligent life that is… against the now well-known and well-established quantity of brown dwarfs in the universe?”
She returns the stare again, her eyes bright as anything he has ever seen. Brother Sebastian feels for this moment like he is the only one in the room. “I believe the formula should be updated to include the likelihood of life arising on these systems. It will be low order and low energy life. Perhaps life we won’t fully understand how it arose in such a low energy state until we have at last discovered it. But against all the various unimaginable things that can happen in the void and the sheer numbers of these systems there must be life on some of them, and if there must be life on some of them the mathematical odds are great that life is teaming on them all over our galaxy, and untold life in the universe at large.” She sits after a moment.
The bell announces the end of class. The students bustle out with their bags and their bibles hurrying to prayer. Brother Sebastian slowly takes his seat at his desk and rifles through student papers until he finds the file for Sister Jones.
Described by her primary school instructors as the most inquisitive and bright student at George Washington High in a generation. Completely socially awkward. On the left side of the autistic spectrum. Unlimited potential academicall
y.
Chapter Six
Beautiful mind
The Year 2438, Catholic University lab, Jupiter Lagrange point L5
Sister Jones, Brother Lewis, Brother Sebastian and Hakham Katz are all teaming on a research paper and experiment. It will also serve as Sister Jones Doctoral Thesis.
The laboratory equipment, the captured black holes, the Hawking radiation containment fields, and nuclear energy supplies are ready. Conditions are favorable in the fourth Lagrange point of Jupiter, where they wait in one of two large nickel iron habitats.
The orbital mechanics are such that the asteroid laboratories are held closely by gravity alone thus no internal propulsion is needed for station keeping, which would wreck sensitive calibrated instruments and their experiments. There is also an abundance of nearby captured bodies to experiment with. Jupiter has over seventeen million bodies trapped in stable orbits at its L4 Lagrangian point alone. Their mass is in size from a pebble up to, and including, several bodies that could be classified as moons. Most are asteroid-sized and mass in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of kilograms each.
Thomas Aquinas, Explorer of the galaxy Page 8
