The Orthogonal Galaxy

by Michael L. Lewis

  “I think we need to figure out that there is an orbit, and what shape it entails. Remember that it was a fairly thin beam to the naked eye when it was just a million miles away. What if it were ten million or more miles away during its last fly-by. Because our solar system is orbiting the galaxy, it could well be that our orbits do not coincide very well, but have now come together close enough to observe it. Again, we won’t know for sure until we get a closer look at the orbit and the speed of the comet.

  “Any other questions, or shall we get to it?”

  Everybody understood this invitation to be more of a command. The time for questioning an astronomer is during daylight hours. The time for action was now!

  Reyd quickly assumed his position on the far side of the room, at the computer terminal where Kath once studied the meteorological effects of the wind storm on Mars. Joram and Kath sat down at the main terminal, while Zimmer assumed a position on the telescope platform in order to search for the current trajectory of the beam in its orbit. It was a tedious night of work for the team. Reyd worked as quickly as he could on programming the mathematics into the computer to simulate the comet. Joram, Kath, and the professor took measurements, calculated, took more measurements, calculated some more, and then took the same measurements and calculated all over. For Reyd’s model to have the precision that it needed, they had to figure out the orbit of the comet with the utmost of quality. Otherwise, deviations in the model would contribute to gross errors in calculation as the computer calculated the projected location of the comet backwards for tens and hundreds of thousands of years.

  Towards dawn, the professor handed Reyd the data to plug into the computer.

  Upon reviewing and crunching some preliminary numbers, Reyd had to admit that he was wrong. “Professor, I just don’t understand how this can be! Based on the absolute magnitude of the beam, and the position of is trajectory, it is in an elliptical orbit around the center of the galaxy with an orbit of 6.369 years.”

  “Hmmm,” the professor thought out loud as he rubbed his forehead. “I was quite a bit off in my estimates. I was thinking just under 5 years. Maybe the orbit is more elliptical than I had imagined.”

  “No matter, Professor,” said Reyd in astonishment. “This is simply massive. When and how did you know it was going so fast?”

  “You all seem surprised that this thing is traveling so fast. I’m guessing that means you all missed the most important clue. Miss Mirabelle, what happens when you are standing on a sidewalk, and a large truck travels by with immense speed?”

  “Well, it’s normally very loud… and it generates a lot of wind.”

  “Exactly! It’s very similar to our comet. When it flew by at approximately 25000c, it expelled a radiation wind that not only devastated Mars, but remember… it also took out all three satellites and the Mars Shuttle simultaneously. Remember how it was all timed in exact simultaneity with radiation detection on Earth as well as solar activity from the Sun? All at the same time?”

  Here, Zimmer paused to make sure his students could see where he was going. “The truth is that those events weren’t exactly synchronized, but when something is traveling at tens of thousands of times the speed of light, you don’t exactly have the ability to calculate the timing of the event to as many decimal places needed. I’ve been thinking about the timing mystery for a long time, and the only thought I could come up with was that something was traveling a whole lot faster than it should be.”

  Heads nodded slowly. A knowing smile came across the face of Joram Anders as if to say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Zimmer c, “In the meantime, we need to find as many fly-bys that we can study, so get those numbers crunching. When we return here in two weeks, we’ll need to get busy studying those star systems which are closest to delivering a radiation signature from the comet in the past.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Reyd, spinning around in his seat to face the computer. Typing furiously and finishing with an elaborate twist of the wrist on the enter key, Reyd started executing the program on a distributed system of hundreds of supercomputers that Zimmer had at his disposal throughout a university and government intranet. For now, all that the exhausted students and their mentor could do was wait for the results.

  …

  For Joram, it seemed like the slowest two weeks of his life. The thrill of returning to Palomar for hands-on study of the galaxy was so much more rewarding than the textbook study of astronomy. It was like those two weeks leading up to his ninth Christmas where he had asked for that first pair of star goggles. But now, he was even more excited as the research team consulted with Zimmer over a growing list of candidate star systems for study. A few possibilities had emerged within a couple of days. With more time the list grew to dozens, and by Friday morning, just before Kath and Joram drove up to Palomar, thousands of candidates had emerged.

  Prioritizing the list was difficult. They knew that they needed to focus on those stars whose fly-bys of the comet would be closest to reaching Earth, and yet the list of stars which could possibly be studied in the next couple of months numbered around fifty. Of those, about a half dozen appeared prominent among stars which may have had the closest fly-by. After much deliberation with his team and consideration on his own, Zimmer selected ZB-5344, a class F9 main sequence star about 27000 light years from Earth. A fly-by of the comet was calculated at just 2.3 million miles, making it a target for intense study by the team.

  As the team entered the Palomar-26 observatory, Zimmer briefed his trio of research students on the agenda for the evening. “We first point our 26 to ZB-5344 in an effort to find any extrasolar planets orbiting the star. There is data in the ZB catalog suggesting the possibility of planets due to minor movements discovered in the star—wobbles that may indicate orbiting planets, especially those whose brush with the comet may have been closer than the star itself. If so, we will certainly want to study those planets for any radiation that may have ricocheted off of the planet, which might be indicative of the destructive forces of the comet on Mars. 2.3 million miles will be an interesting study, but if we can find planets which may have a closer fly-by, then those planets will be of extreme interest. Once we’ve detected any spectral data suggesting the location of planets, we have Kepler3 on standby for further study. I think everyone knows their duties, right?”

  All three heads bobbed affirmatively.

  “Are there any questions?”

  After a moment of silence, Zimmer spurred the team to work. The pattern of searching for planets around the fly-by stars, relaying location information to Kepler3, and continuing throughout the star system would persist all night. They needed to work furiously to cover all six or seven stars on the short list over the weekend, because by the time the supercomputer network had an opportunity to crunch two more weeks of numbers, the short list may grow into the dozens or even hundreds of stars, all but outpacing the team’s inadequate efforts to keep up with the data collection of Reyd’s model.

  The team communicated details noisily throughout the evening.

  “Professor, the movement of ZB-5344 indicates a plane of planetary activity about 65 degrees to the plane of the galaxy.”

  “Kath, can you confirm that from Earth’s perspective, there’s a 12 degree angle, not quite edge-on, but it should narrow down the field of play.”

  “Based on the mass of 5344, it looks like the system should have gravitational effect on its planets to about 100 AUs. Can we calculate a field of study for the orbital area of interest, Mr. Anders?”

  Effectively, in finding planets that were 27000 light years from Earth, the team was looking for a needle in a haystack. Even narrowing down the effort to just one star, the field of study was immense. The effective field of view was about 200 Astronomical Units tall by 50 wide. That represents an area which would be 1020 times larger than the visible area of Jupiter. So, if the team were to find a Jupiter-sized planet in such a large place, the odds of any given search yieldi
ng the location of that planet would be 1 in 1020.

  Of course, the team would not simply pick random points within the total possible planetary field and point the telescope there. They were able to calculate the presumed plane of the planets in orbit around ZB-5344. Projecting the orbit of the comet back in time about 27000 years, they found a point where the orbital line passed through the plane at the distance of a couple of million miles away from the star. They could then narrow down the search to an orbit around ZB-5344 which would traverse through the intersection of the plane and the orbit of the comet.

  For a couple of hours, the team slowly scanned the segment of sky in question. Up. Down. Left. Right. Orbital motions around the star. The telescope worked its way around the orbit of interest. At long last, an infrared detection was discovered, indicating a pinpoint of heat in the otherwise blackness of space.

  Zimmer came down from the telescope platform to inspect the data on the monitor. “Let’s zoom in on that point Mr. Anders, and please sharpen the visual data, Mr. Eastman.”

  The students worked at the computer, each typing away at his respective keyboard.

  “Miss Mirabelle, please run a full spectral analysis.”

  “Yes, professor.”

  After a few silent moments, Kath blurted, “Professor, this could be interesting. Come take a look.”

  Zimmer, who was standing over Joram’s shoulder walked over to Kath’s terminal, with Joram and Reyd following quickly behind. On Kath’s screen appeared a low resolution circular shape. Towards the bottom left, the circle was filled with red, but about a quarter of the circle in the upper right was filled with a more reddish-purple color, and the upper right hand edge was nearly blue.

  “Exactly right, Miss Mirabelle! 5344 sits down here,” Zimmer pointed off the bottom left side of the screen. “Your temperature distribution demonstrates that the warm side of our dot faces the star, whereas the cooler side—this purplish blue color on the fringe—is away from the star. We have an uncatalogued planet, here, team. Great work—an excellent discovery.”

  “Actually, it was more a bit of luck than real work,” Reyd pointed out. “I mean, we just happened to find a planet exactly in the orbit where we pointed the telescope. What are the odds of that?”

  “In this game, odds don’t matter, Mr. Eastman. It’s the discovery that counts, and you can now add ZB-5344 to the list of known stars harboring the galaxy’s five million known extrasolar planets. I’ll contact the Kepler3 team, and they’ll be able to perform a high-optics visual of the planet to see what we’ve got.”

  Zimmer dismissed the team for a break, since he knew that the moon-orbiting Kepler3 telescope would require at least an hour of calibration and location tuning before the first images of planet ZB-5344-P1 would be available for study. After the break, the team pulled chairs close to a computer monitor, and lounged around while watching a black screen with red text that spelled, “Awaiting Kepler3 Imaging.” The text flashed every few seconds to garner the attention of the spectators.

  “Wow… watching telescopes calibrate is like watching paint dry,” Reyd broke the silence.

  “Mr. Eastman, I’m surprised at you,” offered the astrophysicist in mock disgust. “I personally think it’s more like watching grass grow.”

  Exhausted and giddy, the students laughed raucously at Zimmer’s humor. Another wake-up call occurred in the moments that followed, as Zimmer’s cell phone chirped loudly throughout the room.

  Kath jumped instinctively while Joram stood upright. In the quiet of the room, the students were able to hear the hurried voice on the other side.

  “Professor Zimmer, we’re shooting the first images your way right now. You’ve got to see this, Sir—we’re still—well, we’re not sure, but you’ll see.”

  “What do you have, Mr. Jefferies? You sound like you’ve never seen an extrasolar planet before.”

  “Actually, Professor, it’s quite the opposite. It’s exactly like I have seen this planet before. Why, at a glance it looks just like—”

  The cell phone went dead the moment the image came across, as Zimmer unconsciously dropped it to the floor with a reverberating thud that nobody heard.

  In shock, Joram slowly stood from his seat and was the first to complete the sentence of the Kepler3 team member on the other line. The word was slow, breathy and nearly inaudible.

  “—Earth!”

  Chapter

  21

  With hands clasped behind his back, Carlton Zimmer stood erect admiring the picture on the wall in the black elliptical room. The Von Karman Bicentennial Museum at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena was the most impressive public display ever created by NASA. The brainchild of a billionaire space explorer, the intent was to depict the purpose of continued space exploration as it relates to discoveries that help the human race understand the universe we live in. Fronting a hundred million dollars to the effort, the museum quickly became one of the most popular attractions in Southern California.

  While the main room of the museum appeared to be perfectly circular, it was proportionally accurate to the elliptical orbit of the Earth. It was nearly 320 feet long by 310 feet wide. The perimeter of the room contained some digital and interactive displays containing images taken by the moon-orbiting Kepler3 telescope. Exhibits scattered around the room were situated as to replicate the locations of the orbits of Venus and Mercury, with a bright globe light suspended from the ceiling to represent the Sun. The black ceiling featured recessed projection LED lighting which gave an appearance of a night sky, accurately depicting the sky as it would appear over the JPL campus at midnight on the Summer Solstice. Light intensity varied to indicate stars with more or less apparent magnitude. Every attempt at authenticity was made, including colors of red, yellow, pink, and blue indicating differences in surface temperature and Doppler shifting.

  At this moment, Zimmer was admiring the imagery of the Hourglass Nebula. Unlike most museum visitors, however, who simply admire the conical orange circles of emitting gas and the superheated blue center resembling the piercing Eye of Providence for its visual impact, Zimmer’s fascination was one of nostalgia. He reminisced over the intense focus and studies that led to important discoveries about the nature of stellar winds and solar radiation which improved the safety of inner Solar System exploration.

  The work on the Hourglass prevented catastrophes similar to the doomed Mercury-S55 mission, where critical navigational equipment was significantly impaired by radical deviations in solar radiation. The inability of NASA and the government to agree on the logistics, mechanics, and cost of a rescue mission to save the astronauts resulted in a black eye for NASA and a landslide loss for the President of the United States. Instead, the astronauts survived on rations for months while the spaceship trajectory was pulled into an orbit around the Sun. The orbiting tomb was a symbol of failure for nearly two decades before the orbit degraded sufficiently to eventually melt and disintegrate the vehicle entirely.

  Zimmer turned away from the outer wall to look at some of the exhibits on the floor. Appropriately, on the outer-most floor display, which represented the orbit of Venus, his eye rested on a wrap-around folding panel of Earth’s nearest sister planet. He remembered, as an adolescent, watching the televised broadcasts of the first Venus landing by an astronaut. Many robotic missions had already occurred on Venus, but no astronaut had ever been. Public sentiment was mixed on the excursion, considering that much had already been discovered about Venus through the robotic and satellite missions to the planet, but further, many worried about the violent heat and pressure of the Venetian atmosphere. Could the astronauts’ spacesuits be designed to protect against the massive atmospheric pressure of Venus? Materials scientists were confident that the astronauts would be able to move about and be safely protected even under the extreme pressures of the dense atmosphere of Venus. Nevertheless, for many, it seemed too risky to send humans to such a hostile environment for so little benefit. But they were wrong.<
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  An inadvertent discovery had been made by physicians who studied the astronauts upon return to the Earth. Physicals showed that heart and brain activity were healthier and stronger in each astronaut compared to their respective measured activity just prior to departure. Through subsequent study, the cause had been shown to be the air that they were breathing. Scrubbers on the Venetian surface module and the astronauts’ space suits were designed to convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen, but the atmosphere of Venus also contained trace quantities of materials which did not exist in Earth’s atmosphere. A particular combination of such materials was shown to produce the desired effect. A medical treatment was devised from the discovery which aided in a host of common maladies as well as severe conditions.

  While Zimmer didn’t have many opportunities to come down to the museum, he always made a concerted effort to visit any time he came to JPL for business. With each rejuvenating visit, he felt like a child nearly a tenth of his age as he recollected the various scenes. To him, the Von Karman museum was like a hundred million dollar scrapbook of memories that he would never have been able to afford on his own, of course.

  While lost in his nostalgia, he was returned promptly to Earth by a gentle touch on his right shoulder.

  “Ballard,” he said. “It looks like you found me!”

  “I thought I might find you here,” smiled the CalTech astronomy dean knowingly. “Like me, I know that it’s hard not to stop at the museum when you’re in the vicinity. You remember my son?”

  Zimmer’s gaze was turned in the direction indicated by Dean Scoville’s outstretched hand.

  “Ah, yes,” nodded Zimmer as he reached out and grabbed the firm hand of Maril Scoville. “How long has it been? Three? Four years?”

  “Actually, Doctor Zimmer, I think it’s been about six years?”