by Kumar L
“But shouldn’t the extreme gravity here be affecting us already?” Fraser struggled to find the exact word he had heard earlier. “Something about stretching into spaghetti! Yes, spaghetti?”
“You mean spaghettification? The ship has built-in protection systems besides the dome which keep us safe from the effects of time dilation and gravity even when we are flying slower than the speed of light. I believe, gravity will overcome our systems as we get closer to the centre, but we should be safe for some time.”
“So, what happens now?” Fraser asked, louder than he had intended.
“What happens, Colonel,” Anara said, “is that we get pulled into the centre of the black hole, into the singularity, and then we die.”
9
Battle Against Gravity
The crew in Ops looked at one another in shock. The reality of the situation was finally sinking in. Ryan glared at his drawing on the virtual screen as if he expected it to provide a solution. Once more he cursed inwardly. The years spent studying physics would not be of much help today. He knew about black holes, he had learnt even more in the past hour possibly more than any other human because he had managed to study one from such close proximity. Yet his knowledge was miniscule. Three hundred years had passed since black holes had first been theorised and humankind was still not prepared to deal with one of them in its own backyard. At least Antariksh now had the dubious distinction of being the first earth ship to reach a singularity. First ship to fly FTL in interstellar space. First to meet aliens. First to find a black hole. These were enough achievements for a lifetime.
“Well, technically, that is not correct,” he said, just to break the eerie silence in Ops. “We will not die so soon. We will be pulled towards the singularity, stretched into strands due the difference in gravity and then crushed into nothingness. We will become part of an enormously large, compact mass of matter. Yes, we will die but our quantum information may yet be preserved and who knows, maybe it will live forever. In essence, if not in life, we will be alive.”
“Really, Ryan? And how is that any better?”
“Sorry. I just thought if we are to die we might as well die with an attitude!”
Anara shook her head in exasperation at this, then turned to face the rest of her crew. “I did not intend to sound quite so dramatic, folks, but it’s better we face the reality of our situation. We will need to work together if we are to succeed. Time is short, right Ryan?”
“Umm, we may actually have a lot more time at hand than you think.”
“How so?”
“Time dilation. As we reached nearer the event horizon, if there is a ship outside watching us, it will see us go in very very slowly. Of course,” said Ryan, realising he was wrong even as he was speaking, “for us nothing would change. Our time would flow linearly at the same rate. Sorry, right theory, wrong conclusion.”
“Yeah. Good for the rest of the universe. They can watch us die in slow motion,” said Anara drily.
The Colonel was as shaken as anyone else in the room. What a spectacular way to meet death! But he kept quiet. He walked in a few more steps, his uniform crisp and creased, his boots silent against the carpet on the floor.
“What do you intend to do now?” he asked. “Give up and wait to become history?”
“Not on your life. We will fight to the bitter end. We have still not put out all the power at our disposal or our fastest speed.
“We should go to FTL, yes?” Ryan asked, reading her mind. “It might work.” His blue eyes met hers and a look was exchanged. It was a very long shot, but they had to try for the sake of the hundred lives under their command.
“Agreed. Narada,” she addressed the AI. “Emergency jump protocols. Sixty seconds countdown. Everyone, out of Ops and into the dome. Sound the alarm to alert the crew.”
The klaxon came to life and the red revolving lights galvanized the crew into action. There was a rush for the exit, then their training took over and a controlled mass moved to prepare for the emergency jump cycle. A disembodied voice continued the countdown and alarm in the background.
“Narada, you have autonomous control,” Anara confirmed as she and Ryan entered the mini-dome in Ops and strapped themselves in.
“Twenty seconds to jump. Crew is accounted for,” confirmed Narada.
“Do you believe in God, Ryan?” she asked.
“I do now, and believe me I am praying as hard as I can.”
Five... four… three... two... one…
They barely felt the initial force as the FTL system was engaged.
“We are moving, Captain,” Narada reported a few seconds later and their display confirmed the information. “Velocity is one hundred kilometres per second.”
“That’s all?” mouthed Ryan at Anara. “It’s not working out.”
“Give it a few minutes. Let’s wait and see.”
“Velocity rising to two hundred kilometres per second.” A few more seconds passed. “Correction - velocity now at 90 kilometres per second and dropping.”
“Bring all engines online, Narada. Increase reactor output to 120%.”
“That is not recommended, ma’am. At 120% if we do not break free in twenty seconds, the ship’s hull will disintegrate.”
“Just do it. We will use every precious second that we have.”
“Acknowledged. Output now at 120% of maximum. Hull stress at 175% of safety factor.”
“Ten seconds, stress at 200% and rising. Fifteen seconds to break up. Velocity down to twenty kilometres per second. You must disengage! Disengage now!”
“All right. All right. Disengage all engines,” she commanded.
Their gambit had failed.
10
Theories And Speculations
With the jump aborted mid-way, the crew slowly trickled back into Ops. News had spread rapidly throughout the ship. Antariksh was trapped. They could not escape. Death was near. Yet the crew acted with equanimity, concentrating on their tasks, keeping their heads down, praying silently for another chance to see their families.
“What do we do now?” asked Manisha tentatively.
Anara paced the centre of Ops, her brows tightly knit, her face clouded with a mixture of anger and frustration. She was still hiding her emotions from the crew. More than a hundred lives depended on her and she had no fresh ideas to counter the ‘enemy’. Aliens, interstellar travel, nuclear bombs—she’d managed them all only to be finally defeated by a force of nature which was barely understood. But she could not let her team down. Not now. Not ever.
“I’m not certain, Lieutenant,” she replied with a calmness belying the turmoil in her mind. She stopped pacing and stood in front of the central holographic display. “Where’s the French ship? Do we know?” she asked no one in particular, then looked around with questioning eyes when nobody answered. She ran a hand through her decidedly unkempt hair. There had been no time for personal grooming or rest over the past several hours. She was tired, mentally rather than physically. Taking a handful of her shoulder-length hair, she tied it up in a rough bun. “Ryan?”
“We lost track of them a couple of hours ago. The instruments are going crazy. We’re not getting any returns on our scans. Every electromagnetic or particle signal we send out seems to be getting sucked right into the black hole.”
“And if light cannot escape then neither can we.” It was an oft-repeated statement that day. Ryan nodded in confirmation.
Anara looked around at the people surrounding her. A couple of them were standing, but most of them were slouched down in their seats.
“Maybe we will have better luck if we can understand this bloody phenomenon, don’t you think?” the Colonel spoke up. “I, for one, am still somewhat lost with whatever is going on here.”
“Ryan and I checked out the possibilities. There really is not much to go on. With Antariksh caught within the event horizon, our data gathering has gone almost to zero. We can see behind us in a manner of speaking, but we cannot see anything in front. But
maybe thinking out aloud may help sharpen our choices. You want to explain to the Colonel, Ryan?”
“I have a question too. If you are correct and this is really a black hole, then why is no accretion disc visible?” asked Manisha.
For the briefest moment, Fraser congratulated himself – he knew something that Manisha did not. All thanks to Jas.
Ryan pushed himself up from the table he had been leaning against and pulled up a diagram of a dot at the centre of a circle on the virtual display, quite similar to the one drawn by Jas for the Colonel.
“We know about the singularity at the centre of a black hole and its event horizon, right? Basically, there is infinite density at the singularity because all matter is compressed into zero volume and gravity is immense causing all matter and energy to be sucked right in. As the black hole grows and sucks in more and more matter, its gravitational pull increases. The matter being sucked in—some of this matter heats up as it nears the black hole, but not all of it enters the event horizon. Some of it remains at the edge of the horizon, heating up as the particles collide with each other at extremely high speeds. This forms a swirling ring of heated matter and light, which scientists refer to as an accretion disc.”
With his fingers, he drew a bright elliptical ring around the central circle so that the whole thing looked like an eye or the planet Saturn surrounded by bright rings.
“That is what we’ve seen in our radio telescope-generated photos of various black holes across our galaxy and beyond. However, I think this particular singularity is too young to have gathered enough matter to form such a disc. It takes time. That an accretion disc will form is indisputable. Nature does not allow a naked singularity. Beyond the visible accretion disc and beyond the event horizon lies the singularity, forever hidden from human eyes.” Ryan secretly congratulated himself for an explanation full of drama and mystery.
“But why is this hole here? Why here? Why now?” Fraser was intrigued.
“I have a hunch about that too, but I may be completely wrong.”
“Go on. You’re doing quite well so far,” Anara encouraged him.
“Black holes are theorised to form in one of three ways. When a massive red giant star dies, that is its energy runs out. It is the fusion reaction inside it that keeps the matter expanded. So, once fusion stops, the matter starts coming together and the star collapses under its own gravity. However, there are no stars missing near our solar system so I think we can rule out this possibility. Such a star collapse also happens after a massive explosion like a supernova, wherein the outer layers are expelled, and again whatever remains coalesces into a black hole. Then again, we would not be standing here if a supernova explosion had happened here. It would have destroyed everything for light years around us, so that can also be discounted. Are you with me so far?” He was pleased to see everyone nod. He couldn’t have made it any simpler. “The third cause can be when two stars in a binary system spiral in towards each other and collide forming what is called a torus. A torus is a closed, round surface with a black hole at its centre. With the same reasoning as earlier, we do not have any missing binary stars near us so we can rule this out as well.
“Which brings us to the last possibility.” His eyes gleamed. He knew his hunch was right. Just the act of explaining the possibilities to his crew had given him both clarity and confidence. Anara had been right. Explaining something did help to sort it out in one’s own mind. “This involves high-energy collisions. A small black hole may be formed if particles of matter are accelerated to the speed of light and achieve sufficient density. It would have to be a massive amount of focused energy and an equally mammoth explosion.”
“How would that happen here in outer space, Commander?” asked Manisha.
“Like I said, it would require a massive explosion, hundreds of times the energy we use in particle accelerators back on Earth to study the composition of matter. An explosion of sufficient magnitude equal to that between matter and antimatter.”
“There is no way such a massive controlled explosion can take place in interstellar space. And wouldn’t we have seen such an explosion?” Manisha persisted, not entirely convinced.
“You wouldn’t see the explosion if it resulted in a black hole, because all the energy would be absorbed right back into it. And it would not need to be a controlled explosion.”
“I’m not sure what you’re leading us towards.”
“I told you I had a hunch? Here is what I believe happened.” He knew he was right even if he could not prove it. “I believe what we have here are the remnants of the TrueKif ship. Somehow—don’t ask me how, I’m just speculating—the device Jim was carrying was set-off. Whether by accident or on purpose, we will never know. It could have compromised their matter-antimatter storage. A combined nuclear-plus-antimatter explosion happening at the speed of light? I can’t even imagine the result. No one has ever thought of such a thing before. But it might just have compressed the ship and everyone in it into just the right size to form a singularity. Then,” he sighed, “then it would have started absorbing matter and energy from space around it and continued to grow till it captured us as well.”
There was a long silence as his audience digested this. Finally, Manisha said softly, “That’s a horrible way to die. Compressed into nothingness.”
Ryan smiled sardonically. “You may be right, but they may not even have known their deaths. It would have been instantaneous.” He turned to Anara. “Captain, scientists far better than I will need years to unravel this particular mystery. It may even change FTL travel forever. If this is correct, then if any ship travelling at, or faster than the speed of light, explodes due to any reason, there is a real risk of formation of black holes. Spaceship designers will need to take extraordinary measures to prevent this, or humankind will have to learn to be satisfied with sub-light velocities. We will never reach the stars again!”
Fraser digested the information. “Let’s just wait on that for a moment. You said the black hole sucks in all surrounding matter and energy. Does that mean it will continue to grow bigger and become more powerful?”
Anara was convinced that Ryan was right. They’d talked about all the possibilities. Now she had to deliver the bad news. “Most certainly it will, Colonel. It will continue to grow larger. Eventually it will be big enough to consume our sun and solar system, and then possibly we will have a nice accretion disc as well. It’s just a matter of time.”
11
Darkness Falls
"You’re saying that it’s not just we who are in danger. It is humanity itself and even the KifrWyss because this thing will keep expanding throughout this region of space across many light years, right?” Fraser looked stunned.
Anara nodded grimly. I can’t even save a hundred! How the hell did I just become responsible for saving eight billion lives?
“How much time do we have? How much time does Earth have?” asked Manisha.
“Impossible to tell. We may have a few hours. Earth? A few months, a year. Possibly more. I have no way to tell,” replied Ryan, as gently as he could.
“A year? That’s all? Eight billion lives will be snuffed out within a year?”
Ryan nodded. “The people on Earth may not even know of the danger till it’s too late. It will only become apparent when the effects of gravity start screwing up the solar system. Most likely, Earth will be destroyed long before it is absorbed, in a spectacular, if deadly, collision when the planets, moons and asteroids begin to get pulled out of their orbits.”
Fraser had a vision of Mars and Earth colliding and annihilating each other. “Are you saying that there is no escape, Commander?”
“For us, or for Earth, Colonel?”
“Both, of course!”
“I don’t see a way out. The gravity field generated is really intense, and all theories I have come across say that it is impossible to escape once you have entered the event horizon. Like I said earlier, our knowledge is limited, and our instruments
are useless. We just don’t know enough. We are the first humans to make contact with a black hole. Till date we have only observed miniature black holes in particle accelerators and they exist only for an infinitesimal short interval. Black holes have only been ‘seen’ indirectly through their effect on nearby systems, their gravitational waves or from simulated images from distant galaxies. We don’t have direct measurements even from the supermassive black hole which we believe is at the centre of our own galaxy.”
Anara paced the length of the room, observing the dismayed looks on the faces of her crew. She knew she did not have any hope to offer them. She had to keep trying even in the face of hopelessness. “Any way to determine the exact nature of this hole, Ryan? Will that help us?” she asked.
“I don’t see how. Once matter or energy falls into the singularity it loses all identify and information. Everything reduces to the most basic of particles—all we can measure is the mass and possibly the momentum of the black hole. Every particle becomes the same. In essence, we will also be absorbed into one common pool. We will become part of the same universe,” he answered, wishing he had something better to offer. “We need sufficient power to overcome the force of gravity pulling us in. The strongest we can generate is through our M-AM drive. And as we have seen, we were not able to achieve FTL velocity even with our M-AM drive.”
Force? Explosion? Something clicked in Fraser’s mind. “What about atom bombs, Commander? Will enough of them break the gravity hold? They pack a punch and we do have enough of them on board.”
Ryan dearly wished he could offer more, but he was the ship’s commander and a theoretical physicist, not a magician. There was nothing in the universe more powerful than a black hole. If anything, the energy from the bombs would be food for the giant. It could eat a hundred nuclear bombs for breakfast and still remain hungry. Anara and Ryan exchanged a look of understanding and disappointment. They were the leaders. They were supposed to give hope not take it away, even in the face of certain defeat.
