Parallax is exactly what astronomers used to calculate its distance from Mars. By collecting visual data from two different observatories, at extreme latitudes, they could see the relative difference in the two images. In an image shot from a North American observatory, the beam would appear to be just South of the Martian equator. The opposite would be the case for a South American observatory. Since Mars is relatively close enough to Earth to perform just such a calculation, scientists were able to observe that the beam passed by Mars at a distance of just 12,500 miles. This allowed astronomers to calculate that its distance from Earth was over 100 times as much at about 1.4 million miles.
Earth-based parallax—using points on opposite sides of the Earth—worked very well for finding distances when the measurement was in the inner Solar System. But such calculations would be more difficult when trying to measure the distance of the beam from, say, Neptune, or Jupiter. Instead, the team would need to use a point farther away from Earth.
As the team had mentioned this point, Reyd suggested, “The Kepler3 telescope! A moon-orbiting telescope should enhance our parallax, don’t you think?”
“Um… we don’t exactly have access to Kepler3,” pointed out Kath.
“Actually, we sort of do!” said Reyd. This piqued Kath and Joram’s curiosity as they shot a quick glance at each other. “Zimmer has access to the Kepler3 through his Parallel Earth team. I actually know a couple of the team members. If I explain our situation, I think we can get some help from the team.”
“Well, giddyup!” Kath said as she slapped Reyd on the back.
With that, Reyd dialed his cell phone and engaged in a conversation with a fellow graduate student. Kath and Joram strained to follow at least half of the conversation. Within a couple of phone calls, and a few minutes of precious observatory time, Reyd hung up his phone and gave a thumbs up.
“Keelor Jefferies is gonna call me back in about 10 minutes. He’s briefing the current Kepler3 astronomers. What we need to find are planets in the vicinity of the beam.”
Reyd sat down at the main control terminal and dialed up the database on the Solar System. Within one minute he had a space map depicting the current locations of all of the planets.
“Boy, not too many are in good position. They’re either on the other side of the Sun, or they’re simply not close enough to the trajectory.”
“Yeah, we’re looking for a line like this,” Joram indicated as he drew an invisible line on the monitor with a pencil he found on the console.
“Could Uranus work?” Kath said. “A bit far, but maybe we can get an image with the beam and Uranus together. I’m thinking that Saturn is a better choice, but it would be nice to have a third point along the line, so we can convince ourselves that we have the line correctly calculated.”
“What about some dwarf planets, Reyd?” asked Joram.
“Good question. Let me dial those into this map.”
As a handful of the larger dwarf planets appeared on the map, Joram pointed to a promising candidate. “Eris! Right there!”
“Good call, Jor!” Reyd congratulated. “I like the fact that we can find a point farther out in the solar system, too, as that will give us two pretty distant points to more accurately project the line. Hey, wasn’t Eris discovered here as well?”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” said Kath. “That’s kind of cool... using Eris to help us with another important discovery right here at Palomar.”
“Let’s get this thing pointed at Eris,” Reyd said as he stood and proceeded towards the telescope platform. Joram and Kath followed, as both were eager to see and learn the controls of the telescope. Reyd was the only member of the team to have previously been trained by Zimmer on the telescope controls.
Within a few minutes, Reyd had the coordinates dialed into the telescope, and it whizzed to its new location.
“Joram, do you remember enough of the console to be able to feed back the quality of the image to me?”
“I think so.”
Joram descended from the telescope platform, and Kath followed behind as Reyd’s cell phone rang.
“Keelor! Thanks for calling back… yeah… point that thing at Eris, would you… be sure to grab the exact coordinates from Palomar-26. They’re currently dialed in exactly where we want, so you should be able to get them from the intranet… We’ll also need an image on Saturn… Just give us something with the beam, we can adjust the zoom of the image to overlay with ours later… Yeah, I’ll bring up Kepler live on the monitor in just a moment… Hey, thanks man… this is really going to help us move this effort forward… sure… I’ll give you a call tomorrow and let you know… Yeah, you too.”
When Reyd hung up, Joram announced, “Looks good, Reyd, but we can zoom in a little to get a better calculation from the image.”
“Sure thing… how’s that?” Reyd asked.
“Great. Come take a look.” Joram responded. “We got really lucky with Eris, because it has such an eccentric orbit.”
“How so?” asked Kath.
“It’s way out of the plane of the solar system, but it’s close to intercepting the plane right now, and the positioning couldn’t be better to measure a second point along the line.”
Reyd rolled up his sleeve, and looked at his watch. 10:49 PM. There was still plenty of time in the evening for making some observations and calculations. For a couple of hours the students pointed the telescope at Eris and Saturn respectively, collecting images, comparing them to Kepler3, situated nearly a quarter million miles from Earth. With scientific calculators, computers, and plain old pencil and paper, the students worked out the various calculations based on parallax between Palomar-26 and Kepler3.
“Ok, there’s our line!” said Reyd after looking at his watch. “2:12 AM! Where does the time go?”
He stood up and walked away from the console with both hands behind his neck, working out some tightness in his neck and shoulders. He looked back to see Joram huddled over the console, while Kath watched intently. She knew Joram Anders well enough to know that he was concerned with something.
“I think we need to rework these numbers,” he announced.
“What do you mean?” asked Reyd. “We got three points, and they come darn near to as straight of a line as can be expected.”
“But it’s not perfectly straight,” Joram answered.
“Well, of course not… there will be some error in measurement, and perhaps some round-off error in our calculations.” Reyd returned to the console, agitated at his colleague’s perfectionism.
A look of deep intent and concern clouded Joram’s expression. He drew his lips into a tight line before blurting out, “Look, guys. Our so-called line bends in towards Saturn. Either we’ve calculated the distance to Saturn too close, or the distance to Eris too far.”
“Or,” Reyd suggested, “we don’t have a valid measurement for the distance to Mars.”
“I think Mars is our reference point.” Joram shook his head. “It should be the one we can get closest too. Besides, several different teams of professional astronomers all agree on the number. We’re just a trio of grad students. I’m guessing we’re more likely to be wrong. Let’s just rework the numbers.”
“Joram, that’ll take another hour!”
“It’ll be an hour well spent.”
Reyd disagreed, especially when he looked at his watch at 3:04 AM when a fresh stab at the calculations provided effectively the same exact results.
“We need to go back to the drawing board and grab fresh images. Perhaps we botched the time or coordinates of one of our shots.” Noticing that Reyd was displeased with this suggestion, he continued. “I’m sorry, Reyd. I just think that if we can’t nail this line exactly down, then when we trace it back to find its source, the margin of error is going to cause us to miss the source of the beam altogether.”
“Ok, we still have tomorrow night to start our trace,” Reyd agreed.
Kath jumped in. “I agree with Joram. B
esides, this is our research project, gentlemen. We’re not just in this for the weekend, but for the long haul. Let’s not forget that it could take an appreciable amount of our graduate education to solve this puzzle. We just need to be patient and careful with our work.”
With a fresh set of images, and a clean slate for calculations, the team ended up with yet the same results.
“I can’t believe this,” said Reyd. “It’s 5:15, and we’re no farther than we were hours ago. Well, now we’re running out of nighttime to do anymore data collection for today.”
Joram didn’t hear Reyd’s tirade, but instead continued to focus on the data. Just as Reyd was about to storm out of the observatory, Joram called. “Reyd! Kath! I think I know what’s happening!”
“Whatcha got, Joram?” Kath was the first by his side.
“It looks very close to a line, because it is very close to a line, but it’s really an arc—an orbital arc.”
“An orbit!” exclaimed Reyd in disbelief. With a deprecating smile on his face, he asked skeptically. “What exactly would it be orbiting, Joram?”
Joram looked up at his colleagues. “It’s orbiting the Milky Way—in other words, it is orbiting our very own galactic core. It’s an orbital object, you guys!”
“Explain,” replied Reyd skeptically.
Joram retraced his calculations with his partners. “Our solar system is 26000 light years away from the galactic core, right? That’s a circumference greater than 1010 Astronomical Units. The distance from Mars to Eris is about 100 AUs, so we’re talking a ratio of 1 to 108. Now, on my calculator, if I divide 360 by 108, and then multiply by 60 arc minutes and follow that with 60 arc seconds and then by 1000 for milliarcseconds. We’re looking at a mere milliarcsecond. That small of an arc is always going to look like a line, but the deviation that I had pointed out matches perfectly with the arc that I just described.”
“So you think this thing is orbiting the galaxy?” Reyd wrinkled his brow as he let the concept settle.
“Yes.” Joram affirmed. “Definitely!”
Both heard a suppressed sob from behind them and turned to see a horrified Kath staggering backwards and growing very pale. Joram jumped out of his seat and raced to her and braced her by wrapping his arm around her waist.
“Kath, you’re not feeling well. What’s wrong?” Joram asked as Reyd arrived with a chair.
“Sit down, Kath,” instructed Reyd.
Her gaze was fixed towards the console, but the blankness of her expression was clear that she was focusing on some point much farther away… perhaps on the yellow beam itself.
Shaking her head vigorously, she came back to her senses. “Guys, listen… this thing is growing brighter, isn’t it?”
“Well… yes… we do know that,” Reyd answered.
“Don’t you see? Maybe it’s not actually orbiting the galaxy. Maybe it’s emanating away from the galactic core. It’s… it’s like a ripple. Throw a pebble in a pond, and the ripple continues outward, right?”
“Great point, Kath!” Joram said. “All this time, we were assuming that it was a trail of some sort, but maybe it is some light coming from the center of the galaxy.”
“Not just light, Joram! It’s carrying some sort of annihilating radiation with it. Something powerful enough to obliterate Camp Mars.”
“Not so, Kath.” Joram argued. “The beam is on the inside of Mars with respect to the galactic core.”
“Joram… that’s just the visible ripple. There must be another invisible ripple ahead of it which is carrying the destructive force.” She looked up at the two men, each more concerned about her well-being than a beam of emanating radiation. She propelled herself out of the chair and raced to the monitors where a smattering of the evening’s images were still available, each showing the glow of a yellow streak.
“Guys, listen to me! You don’t get it, do you? That thing is heading… towards… Earth!”
Now it was the men’s turn to grow pale.
“Kath, are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” The dawn of realization was setting in for Joram Anders.
“The thing is going to destroy half of the Earth, leveling every building it hits, and crushing every living thing. They’ll be the lucky ones, because they’ll not even know what hit them. The inhabitants on the other side, however, will not be so lucky. On land, we’ll see a dust storm just like we saw on Mars. It will block out the Sun’s rays for weeks, plummeting temperatures to inhospitable levels and freezing crops worldwide. On sea, it will wretch sea water miles into the air. Gravity will force trillions of tons of moisture back into the oceans, creating global tsunamis that will wash every coastal area on the planet into the depths of the oceans.”
Kath’s voice trailed off into sobs. Joram and Reyd stood rooted to the spot in horror of Kath’s scenario.
“The astronauts,” Joram pointed out. “They lived by going underground.”
“Sure, you can come back out of your hole in a few weeks, but what are you going to eat. How will you keep from freezing in the severely global winter. There will be no survival.” Kath was devastated.
“Scientists for a long time have known there are cycles of mass extinction.” Reyd pointed out. “Could this be some cyclic radiation event coming from the black hole that forms the center of our galaxy? Perhaps so much energy gets sucked into it that the black hole must eventually belch out a burst of violent energy… kind of like a geyser bursts out water to relieve it of the pressure build-up of super-heated water and gasses.”
Trembling violently, Kath pulled a cell phone out of her purse and began to dial.
“Who you calling?” Reyd asked as color continued to flush from his face.
“Zimmer.”
“You have Zimmer’s cell phone number?” Reyd was impressed.
“It’s on caller ID from when he called us that first evening, remember?”
“But didn’t he say he had something more urgent to attend to.”
Kath’s jaw dropped as she threw up her hands in despair and shot an irritating and disgusting glare at her peer. “Urgent?! More urgent?! You id—
“Professor Zimmer. This is Kath Mirabelle.”
…
Carlton Zimmer was escorted into a conference room by Dr. Vurim Gilroy at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Gilroy had convened an investigative task force for the emergency mission that would be required to rescue the astronauts whose life support system was being quickly depleted.
“Carlton, thanks so much forcoming back so quickly.”
“Well, I’m glad to assist in any way I can, Vurim.”
Dispensing with pleasantries, the NASA program manager got right to business. “Since we’ve already lost one astronaut this week due to the bizarre phenomenon, we’d highly value your input as to what we’re up against. I know that you’ve told us that you really haven’t yet figured out what we’re dealing with, but you are still the most knowledgeable, and your opinions will be highly respected among the entire team I’m sure.
“Carlton, we don’t want to lose Boronov and O’Ryan, but we’ll be in even hotter water if we lose the rescue crew. They’ll be completely vulnerable up there in the unprotected expanses of space.”
Zimmer paused for a moment. “Vurim, you’re not suggesting that we might leave those astronauts up there are you?”
“No—at least not at the moment—but we need to consider all of the risks.”
“If you go to the American public and tell them that you do not intend to at least attempt to save the astronauts, there will be outrage.”
“The rest of the team will be here in 15 minutes Carlton. Let’s lay everything on the table then. You’ll recognize most of the members of the team from our last meeting. However, the director of NASA will also be in attendance. This thing is out of my hands, Carlton. The ultimate decision will come from Washington.
“Can I get you anything to drink?”
“A bottle of water will be fine, thank you.
”
Gilroy left Zimmer in the quiet conference room to gather his thoughts while he went to collect a bottle of water for his guest, but within a couple of minutes, others began to convene in the conference room. Zimmer remembered everyone from the last time he was at Johnson, although he did not recall most of their names. The atmosphere was slightly more relaxed this time, considering that the team at least knew that two of the astronauts were still alive.
As Gilroy returned to the room, he not only had a bottle of water with him but also a man Zimmer immediately recognized as the director of NASA. He was attired in a dark suit, blue tie, and black wingtip shoes. He was the very appearance of diplomacy and policy making, and Zimmer was sure to not appreciate his presence at the meeting, simply because these were the types of people so far removed from scientific discovery and understanding, yet they were also very crucial in its funding.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce all of you to Dr. Marrak Henley, the director of NASA.” He then went around the table introducing each team member to the director.
The meeting began at 1:35 AM. There was a general briefing on the situation, and all known data points were provided. After a 40-minute overview, Gilroy led the team in a frank discussion about a rescue mission. Launch windows were mentioned and astronaut availability determined. It was generally agreed by all that rescuing the astronauts was extremely feasible, and that well-studied emergency plans were already in place for just such a rescue. Through the ninety minutes, Zimmer had been quiet, yet attentive to the discussion that he thought may be wrapping up, when Henley turned towards the astrophysicist.
“Dr. Zimmer, we’ve been hearing much from the media, from the scientific community about this yellow beam. We’ve heard enough to believe that it is directly linked to the Camp Mars disaster as well as to the loss of Ayman Hardy. When our rescuers get up into the completely unsheltered expanse of space between Earth and Mars, how can we be certain that another event does not cause the loss of more astronauts and resources?”
“Well that is the question of the day, right?” Zimmer stood from his seat to create a position of strength. He began walking slowly along the length of the table. “I mean, if we can answer that question, it will help us determine conclusively whether the benefit of the mission is worth the potential risks. We do not know what the yellow beam is, and we have not proved that it is related to the destruction of Camp Mars. However, it is highly reasonable to assume that it is. I can’t give you my word that this thing will not again attack our inner Solar System, but here are my thoughts about making the decision to save the astronauts. First, America will expect—perhaps demand—an effort. If it fails, will they blame you? Certainly. If you don’t make the effort, will they blame you? Definitely. There are always risks involved in manned space exploration, but you have devoted astronauts who are determined in this effort in spite of those risks.
The Orthogonal Galaxy Page 15
