“I know, but what if we actually come in contact with extra-terrestrial life, Reyd?”
“Well, they’re just as likely to be friendly as they are to be ornery, aren’t they? Besides in thousands of years of human history that we can piece together, what do we have to show for it in terms of any alien interaction?”
Joram, attempting to lighten the situation, fired off a fast answer to the question. “Well, we do have all of those accounts of alien abductions and UFO sightings.”
Kath pursed her lips and playfully slugged Joram in the shoulder. “Oh, stop it, Joram Anders.”
Joram simply shrugged his shoulders, covering up his smile by stuffing the last piece of lasagna in his mouth.
“Well, anyway, what do I really have to contribute to the team, anyway? I’m just a meteorologist, remember? I’m not an expert astronomer, or a computer whiz.”
Joram got serious. “Kath, you are a first-year astronomy graduate student, just like Reyd and me. We have an education in front of us. What better way to obtain it than to be on a research team, obtaining our knowledge of the universe from one of the world’s foremost astrophysicists. I have a feeling that we’re going to learn a lot as we continue to work with Zimmer. This project he’s assigned us to—it’s large, very large! When there are questions that Zimmer cannot answer…” He trailed off. Realizing that he had made his point, he opted to use his mouth to consume the remainder of his garlic bread and soft drink.
Being the first to stand up, Reyd and Kath took their lead from Joram and followed him to another evening of research.
…
On that evening, the four astronomers organized a plan to continue their study of the beam. They used computer models to calculate the trajectory of the circle around the Milky Way. After dispelling Kath’s emanation theory, the team returned to an orbital theory. That is, their major assumption at this point was that the beam was the trail of an object orbiting the center of the Milky Way, since the arc calculated by the team just the evening before perfectly represented an orbiting body.
For a couple of hours they tried to zoom in on the beam and study its undulating pattern. They had hoped to orient the direction of its travel, but they could not make out from the near-randomness of the oscillations which direction any of the radiation was traveling.
After a midnight break, the group returned to their stations to resume their work. The beam was undulating on all of the monitors, precisely where they left the telescope focused on it.
Shortly after sitting down, Reyd turned in his chair. “Hey, Kath. What’s the forecast for tonight anyway?”
“Clear skies. Why do you ask? Are you hoping to call it an early night, partner?” Kath winked playfully at him.
“No, but I do believe my eyes are clouding over, because it looks like the beam is more dim. I thought that maybe there was a light haze or perhaps marine layer developing.”
Professor Zimmer squinted at the screen from behind Reyd’s chair. “Are you sure it looks more dim, Reyd?”
“Well, it looks like it to me, but maybe my eyes are just fogging over during these late night studies.”
“Joram, Kath, what do you guys think? Does it look like it’s dimming?”
Joram shook his head, and Kath shrugged her shoulders.
Zimmer slapped his forehead. “Drats!” he exclaimed while stepping away from Reyd’s station. He quickly pulled out his cell phone and paced anxiously around the observatory.
“Hi, Stan. Carlton Zimmer here… Listen, I completely forgot that we should start a bolometer on the beam… I’d like to use the AstroLab for greater precision, and round-the-clock capability… Yeah, that’s all. No, wait… First, let’s go get the tangential points along the horizon of the curve. That should be about 7000 AU away… Thanks, Stan. I’ll be in touch on the analysis.”
After hanging up the cell phone, he could tell by the gaze of his students that an explanation was needed.
“That was Stan Rodgers, a mission specialist at Johnson. In fact, Stan was one of the specialists on duty the morning of the disaster on . Dr. Gilroy has given me 24-hour access to his team, and this happens to be Stan’s shift.
“Anyway, I can’t believe that I didn’t start bolometric analysis on this thing the moment it appeared in the sky. We should be measuring its luminosity constantly to see if we can determine what is emitting the light, how much energy it is giving off, and how quickly the energy is dissipating.”
Turning his focus back to the yellow beam, he continued, “I just hope that the adage ‘better late than never applies now’ because that is a huge oversight.”
“Professor.” Joram asked. “Did I understand that you were going to get measurements at either end of the beam?”
“Precisely,” Zimmer smiled at the observation. “As you no doubt had calculated, the orbit is 1.4 million miles away from here. At that, we can see about 7K AU away before we get to the visible horizon of its orbit. By taking a quick luminosity measurement at either end, we should be able to assess the direction of travel, since one end will be brighter than the other. The bright end is the one where the origin of the trail was more recently attended. That will help us determine the direction that this thing went as it flew by.”
Kath wanted to ask Zimmer a question, but she was afraid that this might not be the time, as he returned to the computer monitor where he stared intently at the live images of the beam on the monitors. Focused on the image, Kath whispered to Joram, “What the heck is a bolometer?”
“It measures electromagnetic radiation intensity. If the radiation is in the visible light spectrum, it is used to calculate the luminosity. No doubt Professor Zimmer would like to have the data on this beam as it has come into existence. If it is the tail of some orbiting object, then we can be certain that it will disappear. The rate of dissipation could help us determine what...”
Joram stopped dead in his tracks as the professor spun around with wide eyes. His first thought went back to that first day in class when he was sure that Zimmer noticed him whispering to Kath. He now thought to himself that Zimmer must have a very keen sense of hearing. Joram began to offer a lame apology for distracting the professor’s attention on his work.
“No, No, it’s not that,” Zimmer replied. “There’s something I just noticed about the beam that is very perplexing.”
The three students stood at attention waiting for this latest nugget of information from their mentor.
“Come look,” he pointed to the screen. “You see the thickness of the beam here. Since it is dimming, it appears as if the light is not solid, and yet, I can see no light coming from behind it. And now look at the edges of the beam here. It appears that there is a dark band both above and below the beam. Even where this beam is not giving off light, it appears to be obscuring the light behind it. Reyd, can you bring up the star atlas on the other monitor. I’d like to see what we’re missing in the sky if this beam is truly obscuring its background.”
Within a minute, the left monitor had an image very close to the one on the right, except that there was no yellow beam. This image was a digitally-rendered simulation of the same section of the night sky for their present location, date, and time. “Ok, so what I’d like to do, Reyd, is to follow the beam to the star Deneb,” Zimmer said.
“Alpha Cygni!” exclaimed Joram Anders. “Great choice, Professor. It should be right in the galactic plane such that it would be obscured by the beam.”
Zimmer turned in his seat and peered intently at his first-year graduate student. “Actually, Mr. Anders, if my calculations are correct, Deneb will still be perfectly visible in our sky. It will clear the beam to the north of the galactic plane. However, Deneb—or as you point out, Alpha Cygni—is the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, as well as one of the brightest stars in our sky, with an apparent magnitude of 1.25. While it is about 3500 light years away, its radius is more than 200 times that of our own Sun, making it about a quarter of a million times brighter.
”
Kath pursed her lips together and let out a soft whistle. “200 times the size of our own Sun?”
“Yes, Kath,” confirmed Professor Zimmer. “As you may be aware from your primary school science instruction, there is an elementary analogy that demonstrates the difference between the size of the Earth and the size of the Sun.”
“Oh, yes,” Kath recalled excitedly. “If the Earth were the size of a garden pea, then the Sun would be the size of a basketball.”
“Great memory, Miss Mirabelle. Now, if our Sun were the pea, then you would have to be a giant to play the basketball of Deneb, because it would be over five feet in diameter.”
Kath reeled at this imagery. It was hard enough to imagine the size of the Earth, let alone the Sun. Now to find out how massive Alpha Cygni is in relation to our own Sun was simply hard to fathom.
“So, if I understand correctly, Professor,” said Joram closing in on Kath. “If the Sun is the size of a pea—” he said bending over slightly and holding his finger and thumb about a pea’s diameter apart in front of Kath’s abdomen. “—Then Deneb would be a five-foot tall basketball,” he said placing his other hand on top of Kath’s head.
Reyd attempted to suppress his laughter, but instead let out a bursting snort that was clearly heard by all.
Kath turned the corners of her mouth down and narrowed her eyes in feigned irritation. “Very funny, Mr. Anders.”
“Indeed,” said Zimmer dryly in mock agreement with the prank. “Anyway, Deneb will be very easy to find, and it gets me in the ballpark of the object I really want to look for—NGC 7000.”
“The North America Nebula?” asked Joram with some confidence in his question.
“That is correct, Mr. Anders.”
“Why that feature, Professor?” asked Kath with curiosity.
“NGC 7000, Miss Mirabelle, is about the size of the Moon in our night sky. And it will be very easy to see with our 26 here. While looking for stars only gives us certain points in the vicinity of the beam, the nebula will give us a cloud of ionized gas that we can use to find the border of obscurity and perhaps measure the width of the beam. Turning to Reyd, Zimmer restated his direction. “To Deneb, Mr. Eastman.”
“Yes, sir,” nodded Reyd and gave a glance towards Joram just before returning to the console.
Zimmer returned to the telescope platform to dial in the adjusted coordinates of Deneb as Reyd reeled them off. Joram and Kath watched as Reyd and Zimmer worked towards the bright star.
“How does that look, Mr. Eastman?” Zimmer asked.
After a pause, Reyd turned towards Zimmer. “Professor… I don’t see Deneb in this image.”
“Perhaps I misheard your coordinates, Mr. Eastman. Can you please repeat them?”
“Right ascension: 20 hours, 41 minutes, 25.9 seconds.”
“Got it.”
“Declination: Plus 45 degrees, 16 minutes, and 49 seconds.”
“Yeah that looks right,” Zimmer said shaking his head in dismay.
After several attempts, the team had to admit defeat. Deneb was nowhere to be found in the sky above the beam. Reyd pulled up both the live image on the left monitor and the digitized image on the right.
“I don’t understand,” Zimmer said quietly. “You can see that the beam’s obscurity borders are just below the indicated position for Deneb, and yet while other stars are visible, Deneb just isn’t there.”
“Deneb is a white supergiant, Professor.” Anders suggested. “As such, it is in its last phases of life. You don’t suppose…”
“Supernova, Mr. Anders?” Zimmer asked in amazement. “We would not have missed that event. And what are the odds of Deneb dying precisely with the beam?”
As silence ensued for a few moments, the team pondered this new mystery. Kath was the first to be heard. “Well, this may be a crazy idea…” Her voice trailed off, as the entire team wheeled around to see what Kath was thinking about.
“Go ahead, Miss Mirabelle.”
“Well, what if the yellow beam is the death of Deneb.”
“Not a bad piece of thinking,” Zimmer admired while rubbing his chin. “However, such an idea would only hold under your previous emanation theory. That is, the light would be emanating at the speed of light right past us if Deneb had already exploded some 3500 years ago—the time it would’ve taken for the light to reach us—and as we know, this beam is just not radiating in that manner. But, do remember, Team that we must not dismiss any crazy notion. Please speak every thought that comes to your mind.”
For some time, the team continued to stare at the two images. The next to break the silence was Joram. “Reyd, is there a way to overlay these two images?”
“Yes, I can make a transparent overlay of the digital image on top of the live image. However, you won’t really see anything new, because all of the stars in the digital image will simply sit on top of stars in the live image.”
“I’m not so sure that they will, Reyd.”
“What are you suggesting, Mr. Anders?” asked the professor as he leaned farther over in his chair.
“I’m not sure, Professor, but it looks like light may be bending towards the beam. As such, the light from Deneb would be pulled southward enough to be in the region of obscurity.”
“Well, ok… However, keep in mind that what you’re suggesting is that the beam is carrying a vast amount of mass to produce the gravity necessary to bend light, right, Mr. Anders?”
“I know, Professor. It’s a crazy idea.”
“But… as I said, no crazy notion dismissed.” Professor Zimmer conceded. “Go on, Mr. Eastman. Let us overlay the images. Heaven knows I have nothing better to suggest at this bizarre turn of events.”
Eastman worked the keyboard quickly, dialing in the correct menu settings to overlay the two images. The resulting image was a noisy chart of pinpoint lights of varying brightness and size all over the monitor.
The entire team leaned forward staring at the image with captive attention. At length, Zimmer’s eyes grew wide in recognition. “Reyd,” he said softly and calmly, as if in shock. “Falsify the color, please.”
“Professor?”
“The digitized image. Can you falsify the color of the stars? Perhaps turn them all fluorescent green.”
“Oh, yeah, coming right up.”
With a couple of mouse clicks, the live stars maintained their yellowish-white glow while other green dots appeared across the screen.
The rest of the team quickly understood what they were seeing. Far away from the beam, the green dots overlayed perfectly with the stars, but going closer into the center of the image, where the yellow beam sat, pulsating its mesmerizing light, the green dots remained farther and farther away from the beam, while the live starlight grew closer and closer. And at least one green dot, the digital location of the star Deneb, was alone in the night sky, with its live counterpart completely missing. The light was indeed bending towards the beam, and those stars which were closest to the beam found that their starlight was completely consumed behind the obscure background of the beam itself. Another momentous discovery had been made, but as have been the case with all discoveries thus far, more questions were created than there were answers afforded.
While Reyd and Kath congratulated Joram on this huge find, Zimmer remained at the monitor studying the image. He began pacing and mumbling incoherently. The noise level of the trio of graduate students diminished as they understood that Zimmer was still consumed in thought and concern. The tension of silence resumed and was broken by a tension even greater in the form of a phone call.
“Dr. Gilroy,” breathed the crackling voice of Zimmer into his cell phone. “We have a huge problem… about the rescue mission… I’ll need to come to Johnson immediately.”
…
A voice droned and echoed throughout the domed room. “Apparent magnitude can be calculated as follows. The variable M-sub-x denotes apparent magnitude, where x denotes the specific band of electromagnetic radiat
ion for which apparent magnitude we are measuring. Thus, M-sub-x equals negative two point five times log base ten of F-sub-x plus C. F-sub-x is the flux in the band x, and C is a constant calculated for the band of interest. As you already know from Maxwell’s equations, the flux can be derived by calculating the surface integral of an electromagnetic vector field…”
Kath could barely keep her eyes open. As her head began to nod, she forced herself to attention once more.
“… equation by John Henry Poynting, where S, representing the energy flux in watts per square meter, equals one divided by mu-sub-zero times E cross B, where mu-sub-zero is the magenetic constant, defined as four times pi times ten to the minus seven power…”
It was no good—Kath could not stay focused. She looked to her left and noticed that she was not alone in her inability to follow the monotone nature of Dean Scoville, filling in for the absent Zimmer. She looked to her right and saw more of the same. Heads propped up by hands on desks, gravity-afflicted bodies slinking out of seats towards the ground, and—you gotta be kidding? One student taking fastidious notes, consumed with rapt attention. A smile formed on Kath’s face. She couldn’t resist the moment.
“P-S-S-S-S-T.” The letters formed quickly on Joram Anders’s Digital Note Tablet inline with the notes he was rapidly copying from the whiteboard which Scoville had filled for the third time during the lecture. “One divided by the quantity two times mu-sub-zero times P times S times S times S times S times T all multiplied by E-sub-zero squared.”
Irritated, he looked up and glared at his fellow student. As Kath shrugged her soft shoulders in a most flirtatious manner, Joram felt a tingle in his stomach and knew that he couldn’t be the least upset with his delightful research partner.
He shook his head, fixed the equation, and returned his attention to Scoville—sort of. He could still feel Kath staring at him, and glanced over as she gave him a wink. He gave a sigh, looked over and mouthed the words “Stop it”, concerned about how easily she was able to steal his attention away from weightier matters.
The Orthogonal Galaxy Page 17
