Dark Matter

by S. W. Ahmed

  DARK MATTER

  by

  S.W. Ahmed

  DARK MATTER

  Published by

  Brane Science Fiction

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright © 2008 by S.W. Ahmed

  Cover photo of a dark matter ring taken by the

  Hubble Telescope, courtesy of NASA and ESA

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address:

  Brane Science Fiction

  P.O. Box 61102

  Palo Alto, California94306, USA

  branesf@gmail.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008901013

  ISBN 978-0-9815263-0-0

  First Edition: March 2008

  Second Edition: May 2009

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For my daughter Saira.

  May the world of her generation be a more

  peaceful and tolerant one than ours.

  Author’s Note

  Our universe is estimated to be almost 14 billion years old. It is so vast that the total number of stars it contains is virtually uncountable. Billions of star systems are grouped into individual galaxies, galaxies into clusters, and clusters into superclusters. In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi suggested that with such an old universe and its large concentration of stars, there should be a multitude of alien civilizations out there, even in our own Milky Way galaxy. Yet he couldn’t explain why we have never observed any alien spacecraft, probes or other activity in space. This led to the coining of the Fermi paradox, which brought to light the obvious contradiction between the high probability of the existence of alien civilizations and our lack of evidence or observation of any. Almost 60 years later, after numerous hypotheses and mathematical equations attempting to solve the paradox, we are still no closer to the real answer.

  Over the past century, scientists have become increasingly convinced that all the matter we can actually observe, including stars, planets, moons and gas clouds, make up no more than a fifth of the total amount of matter in the universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone may be as much as ten times larger than what we observe it to be. Without this additional mass, there wouldn’t be enough gravity to hold the galaxy together. Nobody knows for sure what this dark matter is made of, although numerous theories involving hypothetical particles do exist.

  The story in this book offers one possible solution to both of these great mysteries of our time.

  Chapter 1

  Marc Zemin awoke with a start, and jumped up in his bed. The first thing he felt was relief, as soon as he realized that it had all just been a bad dream. Opening his eyes, he noticed it was daylight outside. Then he gasped as he saw the time on his clock-radio. 10 am! He had slept through the alarm once again!

  He quickly got out of bed, left his room and headed to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. Luckily nobody was in it, so he slipped into the shower and turned on the hot water.

  There was nothing like a hot shower in the morning, at least not for Marc. He always needed a shower to properly wake up, followed by a cup of hot black tea. 15 minutes later, he was on his way out, with a cup of tea in his hand and a backpack swung around his shoulder. Aware of the weather conditions outside, he had a heavy winter coat on, with a ski hat covering his head and a scarf wrapped around his neck.

  It was a typical winter morning in Ithaca. Located in the snowbelt in upstate New York, this town often experienced temperatures dropping to -20 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was without the wind chill factor. With the constant high winds in the area, especially in the hills above Cayuga Lake where he lived, Marc didn’t even want to know what the effective temperature was that morning.

  The wind hit his face like a sheet of solid ice. He tightened the zipper of his coat up to his neck and trudged forward in his winter boots, cursing himself once again for having moved here. He detested this cold weather. He should have gone to Hawaii or southern California instead, when he had still had a choice. But now, he knew, he had none.

  The gray clouds were hanging low over the sky. The gloomy backdrop coincided perfectly with his state of mind. Sipping his tea, he tried to remember the last time he had truly been happy, but it all seemed so long ago.

  He peeked at his watch. He was already running 10 minutes late for the scheduled meeting that morning with his advisor. “Isn’t Graham going to be mad today,” he thought. His destination was still a good 20 minutes away, so he would have to quicken his pace.

  Marc was a slender young man, about 5’11” tall, with small, sharp brown eyes and a somewhat flat nose. He owed that to his genes, which were half Caucasian and half East Asian. His skin color was a light tan, and his head was filled with short, spiky dark brown hair. He also wore a pair of metal rim glasses that were rectangular in shape. He usually walked with his head bent forward, and he almost always had a somewhat serious expression on his face. The mixture of his genes did give him a unique and good look, but few would consider his appearance to be particularly stunning or extraordinary.

  As he walked along the path to Rockefeller Hall, he thought about his horrible dream. Still fresh in his memory, it was easily the worst nightmare he had ever had. He had experienced quite a few nightmares in his life, but this one had truly been exceptional. Countries at war, innocent people dying everywhere, lots of suffering and pain. Then the ultimate catastrophe – the Earth had suddenly exploded into tiny bits. All 6 billion people, as well as all other forms of life on the planet, destroyed in an instant. He had watched the whole spectacle from a distance, unable to do anything to prevent it. Why the Earth had exploded, and how he had been able to watch it from a distant location, he could not explain. He just knew what he had seen.

  He decided not to put any more thought into it, and instead tried to clear his head to prepare for the meeting with his advisor. It was not going to be fun, that much he knew. Four years into his MS/PhD program at CornellUniversity, and still no sign of a decent thesis. Since the last such meeting three weeks earlier, he had almost nothing new to report. Somehow he couldn’t imagine Graham taking that too lightheartedly.

  The path through the campus led from Collegetown, where Marc lived, through the EngineeringCollege quadrangle, and then straight on

  East Avenue

  to the College of Arts and Sciences. The campus, considered by many visitors to be one of the most beautiful in the entire country, was spread out over an area of gently rolling hills, lakes and wooded areas. Numerous bridges existed on different paths, providing breathtaking views of deep gorges. It was very much an ideal place for those in tune with nature, with ample trails for people to take off on pleasant strolls on warm summer days.

  This morning, however, the temperature was 3 degrees, and Marc really wasn’t finding much pleasantness in his long walk through the campus.

  “Hey, Marc!” somebody shouted.

  Marc looked up. “James! What’s going on?”

  James was one of Marc’s few friends at Cornell, a fellow graduate student in Astrophysics. He was heading the opposite way. He seemed to have a bad cold, though, as he was holding a tissue that he kept blowing his nose into.

  “You heading to the labs, b..?” he began asking, but a loud sneeze came in the way.

  “Bless you! Are you alright?”

&nb
sp; James blew noisily into the tissue again. “Yeah, yeah,” he said with a hoarse voice, “just a cold I caught, thanks to the heavenly weather we have in these parts.”

  “I wish I was heading to the labs,” Marc said. “I’m actually running late for a meeting with you-know-who.”

  “Ah, Dr. Slavedriver!”

  “Well, a little uptight maybe, but like everyone he’s got his pros and cons.”

  “Certainly the only one crazy enough to entertain your ideas, that’s for sure!”

  Marc chose to ignore that last comment. “Anyways, you heading back home?”

  “Yep, in between classes. Need to take a break. So what happened to you last night?”

  “Working, man. Needed to make some progress.”

  “That’s what you say every time. Let me guess… Cheryl?”

  Marc hesitated, but then nodded.

  “So what’s new with her?”

  “Nothing! She’s the toughest nut I’ve ever tried to crack. Can’t figure her out at all.”

  “Well, you know what I think.”

  Marc knew the admonishment that was about to come, and decided not to give James the chance. “I’ve gotta run. Hope you feel better.”

  “Okay, call me.”

  James patted Marc on the shoulder and walked away. In the distance, he could be heard blowing his nose again.

  Marc finally arrived at Rockefeller Hall, the main Physics building at Cornell and one of the many landmarks on campus since its construction in the early 20th century. A large, hipped-roof building with red brick walls and tall windows, it was about 5 floors high and symmetrically shaped like the letter ‘I’.

  Standing outside Professor Graham Dimbleby’s office on the third floor, Marc tried to collect his wits. He breathed deeply a few times, in through his nose, and out through his mouth. Finally, he knocked lightly on the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked harder.

  “Come!” was the harsh response.

  He walked into the office, a small but tidy room, quite unlike what some would call the typical professor’s office. Books were neatly stacked on the shelves, and all the sheets of paper on the main desk were sorted into labeled piles. There wasn’t a hint of anything out of place anywhere. A sweet fragrance filled the air, most likely from some air freshener that had been sprayed around the room earlier in the morning.

  Sitting in the chair behind the desk, peering at his computer screen, was a huge, grossly overweight white man. He was probably in his fifties and almost completely bald, except for a few gray hairs to the side and on the back of his head. A bushy mustache hid behind a disproportionately large nose, whose size a pair of horn rim glasses attempted to conceal. A white shirt and gray cardigan covered his pot belly. Overall, he looked like a very stern person, someone who had little tolerance for wasted time or disorderliness.

  As he saw Marc walk in, he looked at his watch, then back at Marc. He seemed quite annoyed.

  “Good morning, Graham,” Marc said softly.

  “Yes, well, you do still care to call it ‘morning’, hmph?”

  “I’m really sorry for being late.” Marc sat down on the only chair in front of the desk. “You see, I was up late going through some calculations. And then I slept straight through the alarm.”

  Graham snorted. “Oh, spare me the usual gibberish!” His English accent was unmistakably upper-class.

  “I know. I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  Graham shook his head and glanced at his watch again. “Yes, well, I have about 15 minutes for you, before my presence is required elsewhere. So how have your calculations progressed since our last discussion?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about the time paradox problem.”

  Graham took a sip from his mug of coffee. “And?”

  “I’m still not convinced that you need to end up in a parallel universe if you travel back in time,” Marc replied. He then went over to the whiteboard and began writing some equations. As he wrote, he tried to explain what he was doing.

  Graham gazed at Marc’s scribbles, and his expression slowly turned into a scowl. “Indeed, I don’t believe I’ve understood how this overcomes the time paradox problem,” he said after Marc had finished.

  “Well, as I was saying, that if you look at this last equation, even if you travel back in time, you, uh, don’t need to end up in a parallel universe.”

  “According to you, then, you can travel back in time, and alter the course of history within the same universe?”

  “Yes,” Marc said, taking a seat again.

  “Hmph! I see. And if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before you were born – what would happen to you then? Would you just disappear?”

  “I don’t believe that would be possible.”

  “What would not be possible? Your disappearance?”

  “No, me being able to kill my grandfather.”

  “Why not? According to your theory, it would!”

  “Well, no, because of the Cosmic Sensor.”

  Graham laughed. “Because of the Cosmic Sensor?” He threw his arms up in the air, and leaned back in his chair. “Do you mean to tell me that you are basing your entire PhD thesis in Astrophysics on some medieval doctrine?”

  “It’s not just me,” Marc replied, trying to stay calm. “A number of well-known physicists believe in the concept of a Cosmic Sensor.”

  Graham’s voice rose. “An omnipotent interventionist that lets you travel back in time, but prevents you from altering your past? Which self-respecting professor would ever believe in such twaddle?”

  “Uh, well, Professor Dillingham, for one. He published a paper on it a few months ago.”

  Graham frowned. “Dillingham? That old fart? I can’t believe he’s still allowed to publish anything! It’s people like him who give us all a bad name.”

  “So much for that approach,” Marc thought. He was hoping that Graham would take more kindly to a fellow alumnus from Cambridge, but apparently not.

  Graham went on. “Besides, you do realize you are contradicting yourself? You want to travel back in time to alter your past, yet you believe in an entity that prevents you from doing so.”

  “I believe you can alter your past, to the extent that you don’t destroy your own future.”

  “To obtain the best of both worlds in one sitting, hmph?” Graham sat back in his chair, took his glasses off and put them on the desk. “Now you listen to me, Marc,” he said, changing his tone to a more solemn one, “this is not working.”

  Marc swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that your research does not appear to be going anywhere.”

  “But what about those equations?” Marc pointed to the board.

  “Those equations do not prove anything. It’s still all conjecture. Other people have attempted this before, but have not resolved the fundamental problems related to time travel.”

  “What if I can prove that my assertions are true, with an experiment?”

  Graham laughed again. “An experiment? The last successful experiment you ever performed must have been in a science laboratory in your undergraduate studies!”

  “Well, I know I haven’t had much success so far, but I do think I’m much closer now. I’m almost done building the, uh, transport device.”

  Graham shook his head. “Let me explain something to you, young man. I took you as a student because of your astounding track record. But since you arrived at Cornell, you really haven’t accomplished much at all.”

  He pulled out a file from his drawer, and produced a sheet that looked like a resume. He glossed over it for a second, but it was obvious he already knew what was written there. “You completed a double degree in Physics and Astronomy at MIT, and graduated top of the class with a perfect GPA by the time you were 20. You accomplished some groundbreaking research in particle physics as an undergraduate that eventually resulted in the discovery of a new elementary
particle at CERN. You also revolutionized the whole debate in the most revered astronomical circles about what exactly happened in the very first instance of the Big Bang. Some of the top theorists still believe you may be correct.”

  Graham paused for a few seconds, as if to remember those glorious times. “In summary,” he continued, “there is no doubt that you are an absolute genius, easily the youngest and most brilliant graduate student I have ever had.”

  Marc looked down, saying nothing.

  Graham let out a big sigh. “So what in heaven’s name happened? Ever since you arrived here, you have barely passed your graduate courses! And I just don’t understand why on Earth you have decided to waste your PhD thesis on an unattainable dream that is fit only for fantasy stories, not a real research institution like this one.” He chuckled. “I mean, seriously, a time machine?”

  Marc’s eyes widened with alarm. His advisor’s tone was unusually admonishing this time, and the conversation was heading in a direction that just didn’t bode well. There was no option left but to plead.

  “I know things haven’t been going well for me here, but I know I’m close to the breakthrough!” he said. “Graham, I really believe I can make this work. I need to make it work!”

  “I am sorry,” Graham replied, handing him a piece of paper. “I tried supporting you for as long as I could, mostly due to your reputation and my intellectual curiosity to see how far you would go. But the faculty committee does not share my curiosity, and has had enough.”

  Marc eyed the piece of paper anxiously. It was a letter, with the CornellUniversity letterhead neatly printed in bright red on the top. Addressed to him, its content left room for no ambiguity whatsoever:

  December 19th, 2003

  Dear Marc,

  I regret to inform you of our decision to herewith place you on probation, due to a lack of visible progress in your graduate research in astrophysics. You will be required to display verifiable results within 30 days as of the date of this letter. Otherwise you will be subject to dismissal at the discretion of the department.