Stellarium (Origins): A Space-Time Adventure to the Ends of our Universe Read online

  STELLARIUM

  A Space-Time Adventure

  to the Ends of our Universe

  Book 1: Origins

  FABRICIO SIMOES

  Copyright © 2016 Fabricio Simoes

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1523901896

  ISBN-13: 978-1523901890

  Translated from the original (Portuguese)

  by Sarah E. Green

  Author's note about Physics and Images in the book:

  This is a work of fiction. The author tried to make the plot as accurate a reflection as possible of the latest discoveries in Cosmology, Astronomy and Astrophysics, only deviating from these findings when the narrative structure called for it. Any resemblance to names, people, real-life facts or situations described in other works is purely coincidental.

  Throughout the book, photos of real situations were used, but placed in a fictional context. The original descriptions and contexts, as well as the credits, can be found at the end of the book.

  To my family.

  Acknowledgements

  Many people have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the creation of this project. However, I would like to formally thank all those who dedicated their time to making this book the best it could be.

  Thus, I am grateful to my wife Emilyn for her feedback, corrections, support and suggestions throughout the creation of this text. To my kids for the inspiration they offered me. And to all of them for their love and affection.

  Thanks to my family and friends for their invaluable encouragement during this project.

  I want to thank my good friend José Alberto for his thorough review and for giving me such significant input, which was eventually incorporated into the plot of the story. Also, thank you to Sarah, who made this English version of the book possible.

  And I cannot forget to thank you, reader. If you have decided to read this book, a work about space exploration, it is because we share the same interest, and, thus, I sincerely hope that you enjoy it.

  Finally, I would like to thank all of those who are enthusiastic and passionate about science, knowledge and the human experience. Those who, with small gestures and without expecting anything in return, make our world a better place.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  About the Images

  Preface

  worm·hole

  /ˈwərmˌhōl/

  A wormhole, or Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in space and time.

  Source: Wikipedia

  Chapter 1

  It was two o’clock in the morning at the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas (UT), located approximately 400 miles west of Austin. The sky, far away from artificial city lights, was clearer than normal.

  Inside, a young astronomer was busy collecting data for one of her research projects with the graduate program at UT Austin. Her name was Allison Scheffer. Upon receiving her degree in Astronomy from USP (University of São Paulo) in 2013, she had become the first woman to finish the program, which had been created only five years prior. And, as a result of her impressive determination, commitment and all-encompassing curiosity, she had been able to publish two scientific papers in important American scientific journals.

  Allison had been living in the United States for a little over a year. She had been accepted into the graduate program, and, over the last few months, she had managed to fulfill all of the requirements to go directly for her Ph.D. at the UT Astronomy Department. Her specialty and area of interest focused on dwarf galaxies.

  As a requirement for her doctorate, she had to fit her interests into the area of expertise of her advisor, a renowned astrophysicist in the field of dark matter. Thus, she hadn’t had to think twice about which galaxy to focus her studies on: the Draco Dwarf Galaxy.

  Draco is a small system on the outskirts of the Milky Way, and can be seen within this constellation. It is located approximately 250,000 light years away from Earth. This galaxy has the largest concentration of dark matter in the known universe.

  Allison had already been monitoring some of the stars in this system as part of her undergraduate work, as well as out of plain curiosity. Nonetheless, she would need to specify her focus and further define her research questions. The theoretical study that she had carried out over recent months, as well as a few visits to a small, amateur observatory in Burnet, TX, had allowed her to prepare for her big night at the UT observatory.

  After three months on the waiting list, she would finally have the entire facility at her disposal for a full night of observation. The intense stress, the weather forecast tracking, the worrying about having to reschedule in case of rain—it was all over. It was a perfect night! It was early autumn in Texas, in the year 2015. It was 70 degrees outside that night, with a slight breeze blowing in from the Southwest.

  Allison had already seen several objects of interest in the Draco Galaxy. She looked toward the sky searching for inspiration, or somewhere to begin. Then, suddenly, one star in particular caught her attention.

  “That can’t be right,” she thought. “That doesn’t make any sense! It can’t be right,” she repeated to herself as she verified the coordinates, searched for information in the literature, and checked to see when the telescope had last been calibrated.

  “Yes... it’s there... but it shouldn’t be. I’m not going to call my advisor at this hour, but I’m also not going to have access to this observatory’s resources for at least another two months... I need to figure out what’s going on,” she thought.

  Allison spent the next hour searching for any information she could find on the star. She discovered that it had never been studied, but, after checking the International Star Registry database (an unofficial record of star names, primarily maintained by amateur astronomers), she discovered that the star had been named by someone in Australia. This name was obviously not used or recognized by the scientific community, but, since it was registered in the ISR, Allison had someone that she could get in touch with, someone who had seen that star before, and who had even given it a name.

  Without thinking about it too much, she jotted down the name and phone number of that stranger who lived in Melbourne. It wasn’t even 7 o’clock at night in Australia, so, she concluded, “better to call this guy than wake my advisor up in the middle of the night.”

  “Good evening, my name is Allison. I'm an astronomer and I’m calling from the United States. Could I please speak with Mr.—”

  “Stuart?” said the person on the other end, interrupting.

  “That’s it! Could I speak with him, please? It’s about the star that he named ‘Valkiria’ in 1985.”

  “Yes, my name is Valkiria. My dad named a star after me the day I was born. Hold on just a second, I’ll go get him.”

  A few seconds later, a
rough voice got on the phone:

  “Hello, this is Stuart. Who am I speaking with?”

  “Good evening, Mr. Stuart. My name is Allison Scheffer, and I'm an astronomer doing my Ph.D. at the University of Texas. I’m sorry for calling without having introduced myself or sent you an e-mail, but I’m at the observatory right now with a 100-inch reflector telescope and a spectral telescope big enough to see Valkiria—not your daughter, but the star that you identified in 1985.”

  “Hmm!” he exclaimed, “it must be important, huh? So, how can I help you?”

  “Well, really, it’s nothing too pressing; it may not end up being anything important... I’d just like to confirm one thing: when you saw the star in 1985, was it located at the coordinates that you recorded? Did it ever move or deviate from that spot?” Allison asked.

  “What do you mean ‘move’?” inquired the old Australian astronomer.

  “If it ever moved away from the point in space where it was when you recorded it,” she explained. “It’s clearly on a different trajectory. For example, if I look at the coordinates that you recorded for the star in 1985, when you identified it, there's nothing there. However, if I shift the telescope a few tenths of a degree toward the trajectory that the star seems to be traveling along, I can see it.”

  “That’s quite strange... it would mean... well, at least it shouldn’t be that way. I named that star in 1985 when my daughter was born. That’s because I saw that star in that galaxy, on that day, with a very unusual color, and it was really beautiful. After that, I kept track of it until my daughter became a teenager. I used to always show her ‘her little star’ whenever we would go to the observatory where my dad worked. Unfortunately, he died several years ago, and we never went back there... but during that time—for over 15 years—it was always in the same spot. So, I can assure you: the star that shares a name with my daughter, at least until the year 2000, was always at the same coordinates,” explained Stuart.

  “Thank you, Mr. Stuart, that’s what I was hoping to confirm,” said Allison. “Apparently, something happened over the last 15 years which threw that system out of balance. Or, better yet, something happened in a period of 15 years, 250,000 years ago, since that’s how long light takes to get here, which caused this anomaly. Your daughter’s little star is moving now, traveling along a trajectory. I’ve already compared it with some previous photos of Draco, and it looks like there was a disturbance that altered the system. I’m going to keep monitoring its coordinates over the next few years; I’m really curious to figure out what happened there.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Allison. I’m a little rusty... it’s been a while since I’ve read up on the latest discoveries, but the only thing I can think of is that a high gravity body entered the system, maybe something strong enough to provoke that kind of chaos, but still small enough not to cause a collapse. But I also know that gravitational disturbances don’t come out of nowhere, much less in that little, tiny galaxy with such low-energy stars, but anyway, I’d appreciate it if you would keep me in the loop.”

  “Of course,” she replied, “it would be my pleasure. I’ll send you an e-mail with my information. We’ll be in touch. Thank you so much for your time. It was a great talk.”

  In that moment, the young astronomer looked back at the sky and thought: “It’s definitely something to explore. There’s potential for years of research here. If I manage to collect enough data, I can develop something that not only can I use for my Ph.D., but something that will open doors to a post-doc.”

  It was time to wake up her boss.

  Image 01 – McDonald Observatory, University of Texas.

  (credits and details on the final page)

  Image 02 – Draco Dwarf Galaxy, 250,000 light years from Earth.

  (credits and details on the final page)

  Chapter 2

  It was December of 2035; twenty years had gone by. It had snowed heavily that morning in Stockholm. By nightfall, the sky was clear. Christmas lights complemented the scenery. Inside City Hall, the Nobel Prize ceremony was ending.

  At the end of the dinner, astrophysicist Dr. Phillip Hardt was wrapping up his farewells to an old friend when someone interrupted him:

  “I couldn’t help but come over and congratulate you, Dr. Hardt.”

  “Allison? What a wonderful surprise! You had told me you were going to come, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I just wanted to thank you once more...”

  “And, once more, you needn’t do that,” she said, interrupting him with a big smile. “The gratitude you expressed when receiving the award was just perfect. Plus, Dr. Hardt, I had very little to do with the results of your work. It’s wonderful in and of itself, and, now that your work has been proven, a new phase in the study of cosmology and space exploration can begin. You made history, Hardt!”

  “Not alone! I’ve told you time and time again, and you know very well that if it hadn’t been for your discovery twenty years ago, if it hadn’t been for the excellent hypotheses you advanced, if it hadn’t been for your calculations that something so minor as a small black hole—a sudden singularity in space and time—had arisen in Draco, causing the Valkiria star to fall out of equilibrium... if it hadn’t been for your courage in proposing something so absurd,” emphasized Dr. Hardt with a comical note in his voice, causing Allison to laugh, “I never would have devoted myself to this subject and, ultimately, I never would never have made this discovery... not to mention the last ten years you have spent working at NASA to prove my theories.”

  “It’s been ten years already... time flies...”

  “How are things going in Houston? Do you have time for a cup of coffee?” asked Dr. Hardt, to which Allison immediately agreed.

  Much had happened during those twenty years. Allison was now a well-known astronomer. She was 44 years old, but her joviality didn’t so much as hint at it. After finishing her Ph.D., she had become a professor and researcher at the University of Texas.

  Allison had met Dr. Hardt at one of the first astrophysics symposia hosted in the city. He was one of the few people to actually become interested in her work on Draco, and he later began researching and developing theories about it. Dr. Hardt was one of the most respected astrophysicists at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), so his prestige and interest had helped her to gain more credibility in the scientific world.

  In 2016, after completing her Ph.D., Allison got a job with the university’s Department of Astronomy. Approximately three years later, she starting working as a professor.

  It was 2020 when she published her most important work—finally, the research on Valkiria that she had visualized five years earlier. During that time, she had followed the star, collecting data, and, years later, she was able to get her theory and findings published. That was when she started growing her network of contacts, which included Dr. Hardt.

  Dr. Hardt spent the next five years researching singularities in Draco, and how they were related to dark matter. In early 2025, he finally published a revolutionary theory, consolidating ideas that had astonished him for years.

  It was a theory so bold that he would have been putting his reputation at risk—in addition to being immediately rejected by the scientific community—if it hadn’t been for one factor: his theory could be tested and, eventually, proven.

  Later that same year, NASA got the funding it needed to launch a new space program. Together with the European Space Agency (ESA), they introduced the “Stellarium” project. Their goal was to send ten unmanned vehicles into space, over 10 years, in order to verify Hardt’s theory. They not only wanted to test his propositions, but to master the technology of the materials required to accomplish such a thing.

  If proven, both the United States and European Union would hold the knowledge necessary to revolutionize space exploration. NASA would lead the entire project, while the ESA would help pay for the missions.

  That is when Allison (or Dr. Scheffer, as she hated being called) was invite
d to join NASA. The Stellarium space program needed an astronomer who was an expert on that local group of galaxies. Plus, Dr. Hardt had strongly recommended Allison to lead the project.

  Thus, Allison had spent the last ten years with the program, now as a NASA employee, analyzing data from probes and trying to map the topology of the new universe that they were discovering. And, so, Allison helped Dr. Hardt to prove the theory which, several years later, would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics.

  “Today was a very tiring day, Allison. Winning a prize like this is really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The amount of people that want to talk to you, both in the scientific community and the media, is paralyzing. I’m so happy to have found a friend who I can talk to about something other than theories about the universe,” said Hardt with a smile.

  “Sure, old friend. And I need to fill you in on the latest developments,” said Allison with excitement in her voice.

  “Yes, please do. The last thing I heard, the Stellarium project was headed for phase two, right? I know it’s confidential, but my contacts told me that the funds that NASA is allocating for this new stage are much greater than anything they have spent up until now.”

  “That’s it, Hardt. That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she explained. “Phase two of Stellarium is a manned trip. We’re going to send astronauts.”

  “Really? My God, you people at NASA are much further along than I thought! But, how can that be? I mean, you all have been sending probes through wormholes for years, I knew it was just a matter of time, but I didn’t think you would get there so fast.”

  The Stellarium project was created by NASA with the goal of testing the theory that, by accelerating dark matter, it would be possible to create mini-black holes, warping space, and then sending probes on an instantaneous journey to another galaxy through wormholes. Dr. Hardt was the astrophysicist who had not only developed the equations that would allow for such a process, but who had also suggested what kind of technology should be used to accelerate dark matter, a topic which, at that time, the scientific community knew very little about.