by Tom Bane
“Did you follow us to South America?” Tom asked, nursing his bandaged arm.
“Yes, we followed you there, but the earthquake saved you before we could reach you, you had a lucky escape that time.”
“And you arranged that mock assassination of the professor?”
“We wanted to remove him from danger. The professor was suspicious of the general’s motives and we told him about Ben Sanders and what he was planning. But unfortunately SOG got there before us and took the professor and the general back, but we managed to get you, Renu and Tom to safety.”
When the questions ended, Getsu fell silent. He had fulfilled his duties as his master had anticipated. The secret veil of 2012 had been lifted.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Forget the politics, if you can, and remember that, at the cutting edge of discovery, scientists are no more certain about what’s really going on than men or women in the street. When a new finding is really surprising it falls outside the scope of existing curricula. There are neither textbooks nor highly trained people around, to be aloof in their specialist expertise. In such cases the discoverers sometimes short-circuit the academic process and take their discoveries to the general public as quickly and as directly as possible. Galileo, Darwin and Einstein all did that. They flattered their readers’intelligence as well as enlightening them, and let them make up their own minds about whether to believe the new stories.
–Nigel Calder, former editor of the New Scientist Magazine.
Tom, Suzy and Renu stood before a packed house in the Sheldonian Theatre. The gallery was full of newspaper reporters, who had been informed that what was to be announced on stage that evening would be front page material. Scattered among the journalists were some of the academic world’s finest brains, personally invited by Piper.
It had all been Piper’s idea, one he developed and executed with characteristic lateral thinking and a sense of theatre. Once all safely back in Oxford, Suzy, Tom and Piper had spent two consecutive evenings discussing their adventures late into the evening. Between them they had the most extraordinary story to tell, the only obstacle being the question of the official secrets documents they had signed. Piper had the brilliant idea of reaching out to Al Kharismus who, through unnamed contacts in the CIA, was able to establish that, in the agency’s words, “We can find no evidence that said documents were ever drafted, signed or filed. Therefore, it is to be surmised that no such documentation ever existed. The Agency will not pursue the matter any further.” In reality, the agency was in the midst of possibly its biggest ever security breach and cover-up following Sander’s infiltration, and had decided that the world focusing on new climate change theories was just the distraction it needed while it cleaned up.
Free to address the world’s scientific, archaeological and anthropological communities, Piper had devised a suitable event to herald the massive changes that their revelations would initiate. The subject matter was too vast and complex to be confined to a single PhD thesis or any other academic publication destined to gather dust on a library shelf. Instead, all had agreed that they would present their discoveries jointly as an undeniable wakeup call to the entire world. It was also essential that Renu brief Suzy so that she could understand all the subtle nuances of the solar wind and lead the scientific part of the presentation. It hadn’t at first been easy to convince her that the CIA would not arrest her, but within twenty-four hours, she was on a plane to London with her laptop and a bulging briefcase of notes. In forty-eight hours Suzy was, as Renu stated, “as well placed as any leading helioscientist” to take to the stage.
Having welcome the assembled journalists and academics, Piper let the applause die down before walking backward, bowing and spreading his hands to focus the audience’s attention on the three speakers. As he did, the main lights in the theatre dimmed, leaving the lectern in a single pool of brightness. The three youngsters turned to each other grinning at this little touch of typical Piper-esque drama. Suzy gasped in astonishment when she saw her mother in the audience seated neck to Kathy, beaming up at her, and a host of dignitaries stretching across the front row.
In the darkness behind the striking looking trio, a screen lit up, showing an image of solar activity over the past five thousand years. Suzy spoke first, she gestured to the screen.
“As you can see from the chart, the magnetic output of the sun is intimately linked to global warming and global cooling. In the early 1700s, the River Thames froze over so severely every winter that Londoners could ice skate down it. This cooling period was known as the Maunder Minimum. Conversely, a period of warming occurred at the end of the Dark Ages, in AD 900, when vineyards flourished all over England. So, there is nothing new in global warming. The earth has been many times hotter than it is now in the past and we have survived. The problem has always been that there is no scientific explanation to show cause and effect between the sun’s magnetic activity and earth’s temperature.
“Recently, the sun’s magnetic field has been acting strangely. It seems the sun’s activity is dying. It has had the least number of sunspots for a century. The strength of the magnetic field is down by a staggering sixty-five percent. In addition, the solar wind’s speed has dropped by three percent, its temperature by thirteen percent and the density by twenty percent. And it’s going to fall further.” Suzy paused to let her words sink in, and then stepped forward.
“So, ladies and gentlemen, what is different now? The answer is the influence of mankind and the production of greenhouse gases. For some time we have been hurtling headlong into a deepening crisis. Up until now, that is.” Murmurings sifted through the audience at these words.
“No,” Suzy said, “we don’t have the solution to global warming. But what we have discovered is an even greater danger. Why, you might be asking yourself, should we be interested in the sun’s magnetic activity, when everyone knows greenhouse gases are the culprit for global warming? Could it be that the sun can actually stop global warming?” The audience fell silent.
“Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The sun may undergo a reduced level of magnetic activity that will cause the earth’s temperatures to cool. Why would this increase the danger? Because any global cooling is bound to introduce a level of complacency toward greenhouse gases. If this happens and countries stop trying to reduce carbon emissions, then we are heading toward an unavoidable crisis when the sun’s activity then increases and temperatures start to climb again. So the message for you today is that we must be vigilant and continue to fight greenhouse gases despite the cooling effect of the sun. But what we do have is a superior understanding of climate change, and Tom and I will now explain to you the mystery of why a variation in the sun’s magnetic field can affect temperatures here on Planet Earth.” Tom stepped up to the microphone.
“When you look at the crescent moon,” Tom said, indicating the slide that had clicked into view, “have you ever noticed that there is a faint glow in the dark portion of the missing part? It’s as if you can see a few craters in the part that’s meant to be dark, just at the cusp of the inner crescent in between the horns. It’s called Earthshine. Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to record it. It is caused by light bouncing off the earth. Although da Vinci thought it came from the oceans, it actually comes from the sunlight reflected off the earth’s clouds, arguably the only miscalculation Leonardo ever made. In fact, it was only in the 1960s that we discovered that Earthshine varies with the monsoon season and the number of clouds. So, for example, when the earth is covered in dense rain clouds, the Earthshine is much brighter. It also varies with the eleven-year sunspot cycle. The Earthshine is strongest when the sunspot cycle is at its lowest and it’s the connection between that, the clouds and cosmic rays that my colleague Suzy will now explain.” Suzy stepped back into the spotlight.
“Scientists at CERN recently identified the possibility that clouds may form from cosmic rays, highly energetic gamma rays and other fundamental particles that are blasted out
when stars die and explode in a Supernova. These cosmic rays eventually hit the earth’s atmosphere and cleave apart aerosol molecules in the air. These ionized molecules then attract moisture, which can form large rainclouds. Without something for the moisture to stick to, rainclouds would rarely form by themselves.” Suzy paused to look up and saw some puzzled faces looking back at her.
“I know this is very technical for some to follow,” Suzy apologized, “and there will be plenty of time for questions at the end, but we need to follow through the argument unbroken, so please bear with us.
“Now, the solar wind is caused by the different rotation periods of the sun. The sun rotates at twenty-six days at its equator and thirty-seven days at its poles. This causes the magnetic field lines to become entangled between the pole and the equator. The magnetic field lines twist and contort themselves and are eventually thrown off as the solar wind, which is composed of highly energetic fundamental particles. These particles can shield the earth from cosmic rays, so, when the solar wind is strong, fewer clouds form and the earth warms up as there are fewer clouds to protect it from the sun’s warmth. However, when the solar wind is weak, the cosmic rays penetrate the earth’s atmosphere and more clouds form. The sun’s rays do not warm the surface of the planet as effectively through the cloud cover, so the earth cools. That explains the mystery of previous cooling and warming periods when there were no greenhouse gas emissions. But the cooling event, called the Maunder Minimum, that occurred back in the 1700s looks like a blip when you compare it with previous temperatures, like the Ice Ages. So what caused the Ice Ages?
“We need to look at the motion of the solar system as it passes through the Milky Way galaxy to explain that. The Milky Way galaxy contains over 300 billion stars. These are concentrated in the spiral arms of the galaxy. At the center of the galaxy is a giant black hole. As our solar system rotates around the galactic center through the dense spiral arms, it is exposed to strong variations of cosmic rays, like a fish feels the air when undulating in and out of the water. The strongest cosmic rays are experienced when passing through the thick spiral arms.”
The next slide revealed how the earth cooled as it passed though the dense Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy 70 million years earlier, causing the last major Ice Age.
“You can see that the intensity of the cosmic rays caused the dramatic temperature drop in temperature in the Ice Ages,” Suzy pointed out. “Earth must have been completely covered in clouds. In fact, researchers have shown strong correlations to a 143-million-year Ice Age cycle as our solar system passes through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.” Some members of the audience started to applaud, assuming this was the revelation. Suzy held up her hands.
“Thank you, but there is more. In the past twenty-five years, the wall of pressure from manmade greenhouse gases has grown. But we feel that opponents of greenhouse gases, particularly of solar-induced climate change, have not been properly heard. In fact, we know that proper debate has been actively suppressed. The danger of this is that, when solar activity declines in the next few years and temperatures decline, the greenhouse gas theory will be dead since it only predicts that global warming can increase with manmade emissions. Emission abatement plans will be scrapped as temperatures are documented to be cooling worldwide, despite carbon emissions rising, and the link between the greenhouse gases and rising temperatures will be utterly destroyed. We wish to reiterate that the key danger is that, when solar activity once again increases, the increased levels of greenhouse gases will overshoot equilibrium and the earth’s atmosphere will die very quickly, leading almost immediately to mass extinctions. It is vital that we continue to cut greenhouse gases but we must also inform the debate. The sun’s magnetic field with the solar wind and the galaxy with its cosmic rays play greater roles than we previously understood in regulating earth’s temperature.”
The audience sat in stunned silence. Loud applause broke out, some standing in ovation and whistling while others remained seated, furiously scribbling on their pads. Tom, still with his own groundbreaking discovery to relate, stepped forward to take over but had to wait nearly five minutes before they quieted down enough for him to speak.
“Now, it may appear as if I’m steering us in a completely different direction when I introduce Ancient Egypt,” Tom said, “but I’m not. Stick with me.” A few reporters who had been simply listening, started to scribble again on their pads. “As was explained in our welcome, my area of expertise is one that bridges pure science and archaeology, and I’m indebted to my digging companion,” he affectionately nodded toward Suzy, “for a healthy dose of the latter.” The audience laughed. “In my own recent research I believe I have discovered why the Great Pyramid and many other ancient monuments around the world are pointed toward one star constellation in the sky. And what is truly remarkable is that the reason is indeed connected with what has just been said. You will come to realize that what happens in the heavens millions of light years away can affect our daily lives on earth.” Tom paused and walked to the front of the stage.
“Let me start with an ancient story: two and three-quarter million years ago, a star exploded near our solar system. This supernova must have puzzled the apes on the African plains because it shone three times brighter than the full moon for weeks on end. It was so strong it could be seen easily in broad daylight. There was no other sign, no booming shockwave or noise, nor any sudden catastrophe. But a different, less energetic legacy arrived from the dying star, affecting our climate, a huge deluge of cosmic rays.
“The radiation from the supernova caused clouds to form across the poles and less rain to fall in Africa. Large tracts of tropical forest withered and died, so the ape man had a harder time finding fruit to eat. Plenty of game appeared in the newly opened Savannah grasslands as the forest withered, but the jaws of the ape-men were not designed for eating meat, so they were bereft of any nourishment. There was only one thing that could happen, adapt or die.
“In essence, the change in climate provoked some of our primitive ancestors to learn how to use stone tools and fashion them with flint to make razor-sharp edges so they could cut the tough raw meat available on the new grasslands of the African plains. We know that a sharp cooling in temperatures occurred after the star exploded. So we can see that environmental changes made the more primitive ape-man extinct and the more intelligent Homo Habilis species flourished, with its larger brain and its ability to grip an object with thumb and forefinger, predisposed to design useful cutting tools and implements.
“These better adaptations brought the demise of the ape-man, but our ancestor, Homo Habilis, was able to struggle on and survive the ensuing climate change, emerging as the successor to the ape-man around two and a half million years ago. The stone tools they fashioned allowed our precious human genes to perpetuate. We are the descendants of this time and to this day we share the same genes. The ape-men were dead; long live Homo Habilis—our ancestors had gained superiority.”
The audience was silent, unsure why they were now being given a lecture on long-understood human evolution. Tom looked up and slowly scanned the audience before stepping to the very edge of the stage and dropping to his haunches. As a lecturer he had always loved to inject drama, and this was one of his favorite tricks, never failing to create an intense intimacy between him and each of his listeners.
“But,” he said, his gaze spanning the audience slowly, “the question we should be asking is: where did those precious cosmic rays come from and where was the star that became a supernova? Well, I have discovered the answer.” Tom stood up again and returned to the lectern.
“The cosmic rays originated from the star constellation of Orion. The star that exploded two and three-quarter million years ago was in the constellation of Orion. And, understanding this and wanting to preserve this knowledge, the ancient civilizations made Orion the great god to be worshipped and treasured.
“We find the legend enshrined in ancient mon
uments like the Nabta Playa, the Great Pyramid and the temples of the Mayans. And so it is in those places that the veneration of our true origin is recognized. So, going back to the decline of the ape-man, the human race was in effect born from Orion. Orion is our father and mother. And this, ladies and gentlemen, this is what I propose, a theory that shows we truly are the children of the stars.”
The walls of the Sheldonian reverberated as the audience exploded into thunderous applause, the crowd clapping, stamping and cheering as the duo of young and brilliant minds beamed back into the auditorium, Professor Piper patting each of them on the back, glowing with unabashed pride.
EPILOGUE
Getsu was to face another test. His ninja master had sent him to another demanding test, with an ominous instruction inscribed in blood-red calligraphy on a fragile rice paper scroll.
“Take the Zen-key, and then find the true face of the Buddha.”
He had been told he must travel to Nagano alone. With just five hours to complete his ultimate test, he bought a ticket on the 300-kilometer per hour bullet train and settled down in his seat to think. Out of the window, whizzed past the emerald green patchwork of paddy fields and pagoda rooftops of rural Japan. Within the tidy interior, people were talking in hushed tones, an almost magical effect that a near-silent train has on its passengers. Getsu closed his eyes to concentrate and prepare himself for the task ahead.
“The true face of the Buddha,” he guessed was a metaphor in Japanese for enlightenment. But before he could develop this thought any further, an elderly man entered the carriage and approached Getsu’s table, and asked if he might sit opposite him. Politeness forbade Getsu from saying no, and they exchanged pleasantries, as travellers do. Getsu called the serving trolley and bought hot miso soup for himself and the old man.
