Silent Sun
Is our sun behaving differently from other stars? When an amateur astronomer discovers something strange on telescopic solar pictures, an explanation must be found. Is it merely artefact? Or has he found something totally unexpected?
An expert international crew is hastily assembled, a spaceship is speedily repurposed, and the foursome is sent on the ride of their lives. What challenges will they face on this spur-of-the-moment mission to our central star?
What awaits all of them is critical, not only for understanding the past, but even more so for the future of life on Earth.
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The Rift
There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed—their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it.
The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there.
Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world’s greatest scientists—and rocks their understanding of the universe.
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Mars Nation 1
NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space.
But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed ‘Mars for Everyone’ initiative has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.
Challenges arise even before they reach Mars orbit. The MfE spaceship Santa Maria is damaged along the way. Only the four NASA astronauts can intervene and try to save their lives.
No one anticipates the impending catastrophe that threatens their very existence—not to speak of the daily hurdles that an extended stay on an alien planet sets before them. On Mars, a struggle begins for limited resources, human cooperation, and just plain survival.
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Mars Nation 2
A woman presumed dead fights her way through the hostile deserts of Mars. With her help, the NASA astronauts orphaned on the Red Planet hope to be able to solve their very worst problem. But their hopes are shattered when an unexpected menace arises and threatens to destroy everything the remnant of humanity has built on the planet. They need a miracle—or a ghost from the past whose true intentions are unknown.
Mars Nation 2 continues the story of the last representatives of Earth, who have found asylum on our neighboring planet, hoping to build a future in this alien world.
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Mars Nation 3
Does the secret of Mars lurk beneath the surface of its south pole? A lone astronaut searches for clues about the earlier inhabitants of the Red Planet. Meanwhile, Rick Summers, having assumed the office of Mars City's Administrator by deceit and manipulation, tries to unify the people on Mars with the weapons under his control. Then Summers stumbles upon so powerful an evil that even he has no means to overcome it.
3.99 $ – hard-sf.com/links/818245
The Guided Tour to the End of the Universe
Will the universe die a cold death? Will it be torn apart by its own expansion? Will it be crunched together in a reverse Big Bang? Or will dark energy suddenly slam on the brakes? The number of different theories on the death of the universe continues to grow because what researchers actually know about this subject is so limited that it is difficult to constrain the possibilities.
Anyone researching the exact progression of the Big Bang has one advantage: they at least know how things turned out 13.7 billion years later. Therefore, the research community has reached a consensus on this issue to some extent. Predictions, however, have the unpleasant characteristic of referring to the future. Simply extrapolating from the current conditions does not work so well for the case of the cosmos. This is because research repeatedly bumps up against the limits of current knowledge, just like these limits also show up when trying to approach the Big Bang. Therefore it should be no wonder that there are serious discussions involving up to six types of death with even more theories waiting in the background.
Death by freezing
According to this theory, also called the “Big Freeze”, the universe continues to expand more and more. This has the result that the temperature steadily drops. This principle is used in refrigerators to provide cooling, but it ultimately has the effect that, at some point, the temperature in the entire universe is just barely above absolute zero. Thus there is no longer any free energy that can be used and is needed by physical and chemical processes.
If particles can no longer move, then time also stands still. Alternatively, it would also be possible for the temperature to approach a single average value throughout the entire universe. This would also mean no more temperature differences, which make life possible in the first place. This type of death is called a hot death and is closely related to a cold death.
Death by tearing apart
For around 6 billion years, the universe has been expanding measurably. This expansion is due to dark energy, which we still know very little about. It is possible that it contains a component that researchers call “phantom energy.” This phantom energy, if it exists, would have the property of speeding up the rate of expansion even more. It is as if a racecar driver does not press smoothly on the gas pedal, but instead steps down with an accelerated motion.
The car (or the universe) would then accelerate more at a point farther down the track than at an earlier one. As a practical consequence, this model would mean that everything, really everything, including the smallest building blocks of matter, would be torn apart at some point in an event called the “Big Rip.”
Death by being crunched
The “Big Crunch” theory assumes that the expansion of the universe will stop at some point (currently it does not look like it will) and then the universe will begin contracting. The progression would then be similar to the Big Bang – but as if time were running in reverse.
At some point there would no longer be room for life and ultimately even for physics as we know it: the universe would be squeezed into a singularity. It’s possible that a new Big Bang would then occur – and then again and again, an idea taken up by the “Big Bounce” theory.
Death by annihilation
It could be possible that our universe is not the only one – instead there could be a whole multiverse with many different universes, some made from matter, others from anti-matter. Each could die a cold death individually and quietly at some point, just like many people die of natural causes.
However, it could also happen that, by chance, it is run over by a bus – more precisely: it comes into contact with a sibling made from anti-matter. The result would be the complete destruction of the universe from one moment to the next, without any prior warning.
Death by disintegration
It is also possible that we are living in one gigantic trick of nature. What we take for space in its ground state, a vacuum, could really be space in an elevated quantum state. Thus we are being tricked by a so-called “false vacuum.” We could not measure this state, because our starting point is always the vacuum. If this should be true, then one day, unknown to you and me, the vacuum could transition to an energetically lower state. In the best case, this transition would change only a few laws of nature.
Presumably this would also be unfavorable for the current state of matter. Just imagine one of the four fundamental laws suddenly behaving differently: atoms could then change their shape, molecules could break down, and the entire Solar System could come apart. In the worst case, the entire universe
could simply disintegrate.
Death by solidification
This type of death appears to be similar to the cold and hot deaths, but it has a somewhat different background. In principle, it could be possible that the amount of dark energy is growing faster than the universe is expanding. If this were the case, then the density of the universe would steadily increase. At some point space would become viscous, slowing down all movements, even those of photons. Later the universe would solidify in a solid state as if frozen.
One cross each!
The universe is responsible for choosing its own type of death – more precisely, the characteristics of the universe will determine its type of death. These characteristics include, for example, its geometric shape. Because the universe is spanned by four-dimensional space-time, to more easily comprehend it we have to imagine it without one of these dimensions. For example, someone living on a curved piece of paper would see a line on this paper as straight, even though someone on the outside would observe that the piece of paper has curvature.
However, because we cannot view the universe from the outside, it is very difficult to determine its actual shape. Recent measurements with NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have shown, with very high likelihood, that the universe is flat – but the probability of error is still high enough that other solutions are also possible.
The second factor is dark energy. Shortly after the Big Bang, in the inflationary phase, dark energy quickly drove the universe apart. Dark energy now appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe again – and more strongly than gravity can slow the universe down.
How will dark energy behave in the future? That is hard to say because we know almost nothing about it. One theory assumes, for example, that in 24 billion years its effect could reverse.
Starting with our current knowledge on the shape of the universe and the amount and behavior of dark energy, most researchers think that the “Big Freeze” scenario is the most likely.
The future biography of the universe
The universe is now in an era of stars. If we follow the currently most likely theory, the “Big Freeze,” the universe will move towards its fate as described below. But don’t panic – the time until the universe’s death is still much longer than its entire existence up until now.
In 3 billion years
The Milky Way, our home galaxy, and the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy merge. Today the two galaxies are moving toward each other at 120 kilometers per second.
In 100 billion to 1 trillion years
All 54 galaxies of the Local Group merge together, among these also the combined Andromeda-Milky Way Galaxy.
In 2 trillion years
Due to the expansion of the universe and the resulting red shift of the light from remote objects, from the Earth we can no longer observe galaxies that are not part of the local super group.
In 100 trillion years
The birth of new stars becomes impossible, because the raw material required for their birth has been distributed throughout the universe. 10 trillion years later, the longest lived stars, the red dwarfs, also go out. Only now and then do flashes of light brighten the universe – when, for example, white dwarfs or neutron stars merge.
In 1 quadrillion years
Planetary systems come apart as they gradually lose their gravitational energy or are disrupted by neighboring stars.
In 10 to 100 quintillion years
Galaxies fall apart as their stars are gobbled up by black holes in their centers or their stars wander completely out of the galaxies.
In 10 to the power of 34 years (100 trillion times 100 quintillion)
Protons and neutrons and thus all atoms and the stars that they form begin to break down – if protons are actually unstable as the theory predicts.
In 10 to the power of 40 years (100 quintillion times 100 quintillion)
The universe’s normal matter is made completely from photons and leptons (among other things, electrons). Black holes are the only large, stable objects.
In 10 to the power of 100 years (a 1 with 100 zeros)
All black holes have evaporated – black holes constantly emit some thermal Hawking radiation so they can eventually evaporate. Electrons and positrons dominate normal matter. They meet now and then, forming positronium atoms or mutually annihilating each other. Space is so empty that there is almost no activity.
If protons are not unstable, the universe needs approximately 10 to the 76th power years (a 1 with 1076 zeros) until all matter is converted into black holes.
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Glossary of Acronyms
AI – Artificial Intelligence
BESM – Bolshaya Elektronno-Schetnaya Mashina (Soviet mainframe computer series)
COMECON – COuncil for Mutual ECONomic assistance
Comms – Communications
EVA – ExtraVehicular Activity
FORTRAN – FORmula TRANslation
LED – Light-Emitting Diode
RISC – Reduced Instruction Set Computer
TsUP – Tsentr Upravleniya Polyetom (Mission Control Center in Moscow)
VAX – Virtual Address eXtension (Digital Equipment Corp. computer series)
Metric to English Conversions
It is assumed that by the time the events of this novel take place, the United States will have joined the rest of the world and will be using the International System of Units, the modern form of the metric system.
Length:
centimeter = 0.39 inches
meter = 1.09 yards, or 3.28 feet
kilometer = 1093.61 yards, or 0.62 miles
Area:
square centimeter = 0.16 square inches
square meter = 1.20 square yards
square kilometer = 0.39 square miles
Weight:
gram = 0.04 ounces
kilogram = 35.27 ounces, or 2.20 pounds
Volume:
liter = 1.06 quarts, or 0.26 gallons
cubic meter = 35.31 cubic feet, or 1.31 cubic yards
Temperature:
To convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, multiply by 1.8 and then add 32
To convert Kelvin to Celsius, subtract 273.15
Excerpt: The Triton Disaster
5/23/2080, VSS Freedom
“What is that?”
Startled, Nick turned towards the sound of the voice. One of the passengers, the skinny bald one, was watching the radar image over his shoulder.
“During the flight, you should...” Nick began, but then shook his head. Here we go again, he thought. There wasn’t really anything wrong with people asking him questions during the flight. They were, in the end, paying for him to entertain them.
“Let me see...” He looked for the bald man’s name tag and read it. “Mr. Wiseman. We’ll find out shortly.”
He shifted the radar image to center on the shadow the man had spotted. Usually the autopilot handled the radar and Nick didn’t have to check it. The pilot only had to step in if something was endangering the ship’s flight path and the autopilot hadn’t determined a detour. In other words, never. Whatever was casting the shadow must have been rotating, since the intensity changed at a rate of approximately once per minute. Nick retrieved the orbital data and nodded. It was probably one of the Spacelink satellites a crazy billionaire had paid to have fired into low orbit, way back when, only to just leave them up there when his company had gone bankrupt.
“Mr. Wiseman? This looks like an old Spacelink satellite. It’s a miracle it hasn’t burned up yet.”
It was strange, though. At such a low orbit, the atmosphere would have caused so much deceleration that the satellite should have fallen long ago. But during one of the launches the satellite deployment hadn’t gone as planned, so four of them had ended up in
higher orbits. Nick remembered this only because it had delayed his own first launch into space by a month. NASA had wanted to be sure that the private firm had its technology under control.
“Spacelink?” the curious passenger asked.
“Yes, that’s what the low orbit suggests. If it were an active satellite, the radar would issue a warning.”
“Then that thing is worth a lot!”
“Well, after so much time it’s become electronic waste.”
“Didn’t you hear that one of the company founder’s vehicles was auctioned off at fifty million the other day? A salvage company brought it back from its Mars orbit.”
The man was right. The Spacelink founder’s fans still adored him, and the fact that most of the other satellites in the series had burned up would increase the value of this specimen significantly.
“I think, Mr. Wiseman, that we should note what the exact path of this gem is. Then, later on we can—”
“But why later?” interrupted the passenger. He had become so loud that four of his five fellow travelers stopped photographing from their portholes to look up at him.
“We should discuss this in private,” said Nick, raising his arms.
The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3) Page 29
