by OMAR FINK
Gitane appeared a little startled, “Is this Ert Cloud dangerous?”
Lee wiped her hand across the air, “No, no, not at all. The Oort Cloud is just part of the Solar System that’s been there since the beginning. The whole Solar System was probably occupied by large clouds of rocks and debris billions of years ago, but as the planets formed, their gravitational fields have swept the inner parts clean, leaving an outer cloud of rocks and debris that were discovered by a Dutch astronomer named Jan Oort and named after him. It doesn’t make anything out there inherently more dangerous. This object is just coming from an unusual direction compared to most comets and asteroids. And it is coming relatively fast and it seems to be fairly large. But we won’t have specific details on those aspects until we’ve had time to accumulate more data.”
Gitane followed up with, “And there you have it. There is a large strange object coming into our Solar System at a fast rate of speed from a mysterious cloud called Ert. Who knew I’d be reporting about clouds in outer space?” He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders as the live camera feed faded into a commercial.
He turned toward Lee and asked, “Okay, did I mess that up too bad?”
She chuckled and grinned widely, “Well, you did mess it up, but there wasn’t enough time to mess it up badly.”
Gitane smiled with relief and dropped his gaze toward her legs for a second. Looking back up, he said, “Would you like to go get a drink?”
Lee tilted her head a little sideways and answered, “Sure.” Then she climbed out of her chair and stood up.
Gitane stared at her legs some more while she was standing up, then stood himself and led her off the TV set.
-1 month, JAIPUR, INDIA
Nabith Mehra was playing with some marbles in the dust on the hard packed ground. He flicked a marble out of his hand and watched it strike another marble and then the second marble struck a third marble. He stared at the marbles for a moment then turned his face upward to the evening sky. He stood up and tilted his head from one side to the other and back again, but kept on staring at the same spot where a new star had appeared. His mother noticed the rapt attention of the boy and walked over to where he was standing. She followed his gaze up into the sky and eventually reached the dot of light he was watching.
Nabith sensed the presence of his mother and turned his head toward her, “There is a new star in the sky.” he exclaimed and pointed at it. “Does that mean things will change?” he asked.
She put her hand on his shoulder, “Some people believe that. Some people believe when a new star comes, you can make a wish on it that will come true.”
Nabith looked back at his mother and asked, “If I wish for Baba to get well, will it happen?”
His mother lowered her chin a bit and replied, “Your father is very sick. The doctors are not sure that he will ever get well. But if wishing on the star makes you feel better, you should do it.”
Nabith said, “It’s not really a star. I know that. It’s a giant comet and the only reason we can see it is because the Sun is melting ice and pushing the water vapor away from it in a stream. But I still want Baba to get well.” He looked down at the ground for a moment.
His mother said quietly, “We all want him to get better, Nabith. But we have to be prepared for the chance that he may not.” She turned and began to walk back into the house.
Nabith said, “We are here in India just above the center line of the planet. The Sun is below our horizon over there in the west. They say the comet will circle the Sun, then leave the Solar System. That means it will move in that direction, circle around, and then leave in that direction.” He pointed at several spots in the sky as he spoke.
His mother murmured to herself as she stepped back inside, “For a thirteen-year-old boy, sometimes you know more than most adults.”
Nabith turned his attention away from the sky and back to the marbles he was playing with in the dust on the ground. He carefully calculated some angles and then using the back of his thumb, flipped a marble out of his hand toward some others which scattered when they were struck. He smiled at the results.
ZERO day, CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
Gitane Levesque adjusted his tie and placed his hands palm down on the desk in front of him just before the camera went live, “Hello, this is Gitane Levesque with Europa Alliance Press. Today, I’m reporting from the Mount Stromlo Observatory center just north of Canberra, here in Australia. This center no longer has any telescopes here, but it receives and processes image data from the telescopes at Siding Spring and is the astronomy research center for the Australian National University.”
As Levesque spoke, a graphic of the orbit of a comet appeared behind him on the television screen, “For the last six months, the attention of the entire world has been on comet Martin, named after Lee Martin, the Australian astronomer who discovered it. Lee and other astronomers, described it as a dwarf planet when they first saw it, because it was too far away from the Sun to show a tail or coma as they call it.
Levesque shifted to face another camera and the graphic behind him changed to a photo of a spacecraft.
“Today, we’re watching images that are being relayed to us from a spacecraft telescope known as SOHO, which is short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The SOHO telescope sits out in space at a position where the gravity from the Sun and the gravity from the Earth are in balance and keep the SOHO craft sitting still in the same place. SOHO is aimed at the Sun and sends a continuous stream of pictures of the activity on the Sun back to Earth for our astronomers to analyze.”
Levesque turned back to the original camera angle and the graphic disappeared and the image zoomed in to frame Gitane closely. He said, “Astronomers tell us that comet Martin will… well, here’s Lee Martin to explain it herself.” As he smiled, the camera view pulled back to include Lee Martin, now sitting at the desk beside Gitane Levesque.
Lee flashed a big smile at the camera, “That was a great intro, Gitane, and you nailed it.” She turned to grin at Gitane who smiled back. Then she continued, “When we first found this object, we didn’t know much about it. It was large, and was approaching fast, and it was coming from an area of the sky known as the Oort cloud. Now, after observing it for many months and collecting a lot of data, we are calling it a comet because the heat from the Sun is evaporating ice into gas and trailing a long stream of this gas and dust that is lit up by the Sun, creating the tail that we associate with comets. We also know that this comet is unusually large, measuring close to sixteen hundred kilometers in diameter. That makes it bigger than Ceres, which is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and less than half the size of our Moon. It is the largest comet we have ever seen.”
Now it was Lee who turned to face another camera and a graphic appeared behind her, showing a closer view of the comet and an orbital path that swung around the Sun and back out into space. Lee described the graphic, “As you can see here, this comet will approach the Sun, circle around it and then head back out into space and leave the Solar System. Some comets do this on a regular basis, circling the Sun and then returning to do it again hundreds or even thousands of years later. This is the first time we’ve ever seen this comet, so we don’t yet know exactly what it will do or when it will return, if it ever does. Once we see the trajectory around the Sun, we’ll have much more data for calculations and can create some estimates for a future path.”
+1 day, Lee Martin wrote in her blog, “The Naked Stars”:
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+10 days, Lee Martin wrote in her blog, “The Naked Stars”:
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+15 days, Lee Martin wrote in her blog, “The Naked Stars”:
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+20 days
Lee Martin sent the following email to: the Center for Computational Astrophysics [ATERUI] in Japan, the University of Arizona Research Data Center [El-Gato] in the US, and the European Research Center for Exascale Technology in the Netherlands:
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Within hours, all the other astronomy computing facilities confirmed that their current calculations were predicting the possibility of some level of impact with Earth from at least some of the comet train fragments on return. They all stressed that the calculations would become more precise with each passing day as the orbital observations added to the data being used. They also concurred on the need to encrypt all future transmissions on this subject.
Lee Martin stopped adding posts to her blog.
+25 days
An encrypted email tagged as SENSITIVE INFORMATION was distributed by the World Astronomy Association to all involved parties that stated that the “possibility of an impact” was being upgraded to “probability of an impact”.
+27 days, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
The face of Delize Naidu was composed of features that most in South Africa would consider to be classic Zulu beauty. High cheekbones and a strong jutting jawline framed a long thin nose with wide nostrils. Her lips were full but precisely defined, her eyebrows thin below a broad forehead, and her thick black hair hung straight down and was cut to shoulder-length which gave her a regal look.
Delize pushed the cap back off her hair and set it down on the table. She lifted the wait-staff apron over her head and set it down on the cap, then swept both of them into the laundry bin. She called across the room, “Hey Ginny, I’m outa here. See ya tomorrow.”
Ginny called back, “Okay Delize. You goin crosstown to clean up rich folks homes then?”
Delize responded, “Ya. Gotsa pay the bills, right? And pushing burgers here at Mama Roccos don’t get that done.”
Ginny said, “Hey D, a customer left an order sittin at the drive-up. You hungry? It’ll end up in the trash if you don’t take it. It’s a burger and a drink.”
Delize said, “Every bit helps I guess. Thanks Gin. I’m gone.”
She grabbed the bag on her way to the back door of the restaurant and stepped out into the dry heat of South Africa on the parking lot behind Mama Roccos. She walked over to her old beat up white Volkswagen Transporter van and slid in behind the wheel. She put the bag with the burger in it and the drink down into the little bin she kept in the empty gap between the two front seats. Then she took out her phone and started scrolling through some data. Eventually she spoke to herself, “Hmm, that’ll do.” and tapped the screen several times to select an item and confirm it. Then she tapped several more times to make a call and held the phone up in the air as it began to ring.
A female voice answered on the phone, “Hey D, is that you?”
She stuck the phone into a clip that was mounted on an air vent in the middle of the dashboard, and answered, “Yay Jo, it be me.”
The voice asked, “Wassup girl?”
Delize said, “Hey, I’m on my way, but I can pick up a rider going crosstown and get paid for the trip. Can you let Mrs Ackerman know I’ll be there about fifteen minutes late?”
Jo said, “Okay, but you know she don’t like that.”
Delize spoke back to the phone, “Ya I know, but you know I got bills to pay girl. Thanks Jozette.”
Jo said, “K girl, see you when you get here.” There was a click and then a beep on the phone as she ended the call. She clipped the phone onto the charging pad on the dashboard.
+28 days, CONFERENCE CALL
Anselm Hendriks called the teleconference call to order with a roll call of participants. When he finished, he introduced himself, “Most of you have met me personally, but for those that have not, my name is Anselm Hendriks, and I am the current president of the World Astronomy Association. We have scheduled this call to discuss the trajectory calculation finding regarding the return of the comet fragment train known as Martin. First, let us be clear that these calculations have established a high probability that many of the comet train fragments will impact the Earth on their return approximately ten years from now. If you concur with this statement, please remain silent. If you disagree, please state your name.” There was nothing but silence for several seconds.
Then a single voice made a sound of clearing their throat and announced, “This is Gregor Manz from Vienna.” Then there was more silence.
Anselm said, “Very well, Gregor. Speak your mind.”
Gregor said, “Well, I don’t exactly disagree with the calculations. Er, that is, they are obviously correctly calculated given the current data. But my question is, what if the data changes over the next ten years?”
Again, there was silence. Finally, Anselm responded, “Well, we have to address the current data and the calculations associated with that data as it is at the moment. When the data changes, we’ll need to readdress the calculations because they will obviously have changed. Are there any other disagreements or objections or are we all in concurrence?”
More silence reigned over the conference call. Anselm resumed, “Okay, now we need to discuss what can happen when the fragments return and some of them strike the Earth. I know there have been many background discussions on this topic. Let’s allow Lee Martin to provide us with a summary of these discussions since she has been at the center of many of them. Lee?”
Lee Martin began speaking, “There is a wide range of estimates about the spread of the comet train and that is a primary factor in determining how many of them will impact Earth. As the original body broke up, there was visible venting of gases and this action created some separation between the fragments. Different rotational motion was imparted to different fragments and this too causes some variation in the separation depending on how the solar heat warms each fragment as they rotate. In order to predict some of these actions and extrapolate them ten years into the future, we have to use some random functions. This means it’s a crap shoot. But the random functions can be reasonably limited to ranges that make sense.” Lee paused.
Then she continued, “Now to the important part. We know the Earth is just under thirteen thousand kilometers in diameter. We know the diameter of the original
object was close to sixteen hundred kilometers. We can predict with reasonably accuracy that the spread of the fragments is now contained within a tunnel that is about three thousand kilometers in diameter and that ten years later, that tunnel size is likely to have expanded to roughly seven thousand kilometers in diameter. Think of the Earth as a target that is thirteen thousand klicks in diameter and the comet train is like a shotgun blast of pellets that will have spread out to seven thousand klicks in diameter. If the shotgun blast hits the target directly, all of the pellets will strike the target. If the blast is somewhat off center, some of the pellets will hit the target and some may miss. Again, she paused for several seconds.
