The Orthogonal Galaxy (36 page)

Paol gave up belief in
something divine years ago. But for the first time in ages, Paol
could see potential purpose—fate-guided purpose—to his ordeal. In
the long dark hours of the night he wondered if there really was
something called fate, and if so was it fair and balanced? Did it
have the foresight to turn even the ugliest of present situations
into meaningful futures? Or was fate just the godless embodiment of
hope that he needed to cling to in a meaningless world?

20

“
So, you knew all along!”
Kath exclaimed in disbelief, hitting Joram on the shoulder as they
approached Professor Zimmer’s office.

“
Not all along,” Joram
downplayed his discovery. “In hindsight, I think Zimmer knew even
before I did.”

“
Why do you say
that?”

“
Just a hunch. Do you
remember the last meeting we had in the conference room at Johnson?
The one where we were deciding what to do with the last three
paddles?”

Kath nodded while looking
intently into Joram’s face as the graduate students pressed on down
the long hall of the astronomy building and stopped abruptly at the
professor’s office door.

“
I suspect that Zimmer
knew what I was thinking all along, and that is why he pressed me
on the matter. I saw a look of surprise when I suggested ramming
the beam upstream at full speed, almost as if my thoughts betrayed
me to him. At the time, I thought that if the paddles were simply
disappearing, because they were being driven by the beam faster
than the speed of light, then we might be able to see more of the
trajectory of that paddle as it did an abrupt U-turn towards the
downstream and disappeared. By seeing the negative rate of
acceleration, we would be able to ballpark the speed of the
particles in the beam. The bottom line is that I thought I read
something in his expression that may have indicated he knew what I
was thinking. I’m fairly certain that he had already guessed what
the beam was doing. He just needed enough evidence to convince
himself and the scientific community.”

“
But, how did he guess?
Why would he guess something so preposterous? During thousands of
years of recorded human history, nobody has ever seen anything
traveling faster than the speed of light. It’s so… so…
unrelativistic.”

“
I prefer
anti-relativistic,” said a familiar raspy voice approaching Kath
from behind.

Kath gave a start. “Oh,
professor… I didn’t know you were there.”

“
I see you two are right
on time,” acknowledged the astrophysicist tapping on his wrist
watch as he unlocked the door to his office. Looking down the hall
in both directions, he continued. “But where is…”

At that moment, Reyd
appeared briskly from around the corner of the hall which Zimmer
was facing.

“
Ah, there is Mr. Eastman
now.” He opened the door and invited his research team into his
office for the appointed meeting which all three students had been
eagerly anticipating.

It was Joram’s first time
in the hallowed—almost sacred—room. It was much smaller than he
would’ve guessed, and he couldn’t help wonder how some of the
brightest ideas of their day could come from such a humble office.
If only he could interview the walls, painted in light beige; the
desk, with its three modest stacks of papers; the laptop computer,
which was turned on, but currently showed a black screen, as if to
purposefully veil all of the secrets that were maintained
inside.

There were shelves above
every counter and desktop, housing an array of books, many authored
or co-authored by Zimmer himself: “Quantum Forces of Nature”,
“Astronomical Phenomena: Current Research on Unsolved Issues in the
Universe”, “The Big Bang and Zeta Theory”, “Intergalactic Space and
Matter”, “Advanced Particle Physics.” At the end of the room was a
window with blinds pulled up, revealing a portion of the rooftop of
Zimmer’s namesake planetarium. A hint of sunlight bathed a small
corner of the office as the afternoon wore on. There was a slight
hum and low tick of a wall clock above the main desk.

Zimmer invited his
students to a round white oak table with four padded chairs. As
they settled in, he grabbed a CalTech coffee mug filled with water,
a notepad, and a pen before joining the students.

“
Let me start with Miss
Mirabelle’s question, first.”

“
What question,
Professor?”

“
I think it was something
along the lines of… ‘How would he have guessed something so
absurd?’ Was that the question you just asked outside my office,
Ms. Mirabelle?”

Kath blushed, while Joram
relished this rare off-guard moment with a smile. Reyd laughed
heartily at her gaffe. “Oh, Professor… I’m… I’m sorry. It was
impertinent of me.”

Joram’s smile fell open
suddenly. Was that an apology? From Kath Mirabelle? It must’ve been
a first, he thought.

“
No, no… not at all, Miss
Mirabelle. In fact…” his voice trailed off with his thought. He
stood up and went to his desk searching for something in one of the
stacks of papers. “Ah, here it is.”

He returned to the table
with a crisp piece of paper recently printed out. He placed the
paper in front of Kath and asked her to read the blue-highlighted
portion of a news article from the U.S.A. Today website.

“
In an announcement which
has rattled the scientific community, world-renowned astronomer,
Carlton Zimmer issued a statement from the California Institute of
Technology theorizing on a discovery of ‘warp’ed
proportions…”

“
Ah, yes… I love that
statement,” Zimmer interrupted. With childlike excitement, he
thrust a finger at the word ‘warp.’ “Clever, isn’t it? It’s a
double entendre on the word warp, meaning both faster than the
speed of light, and also implying that I’ve just plain lost my
marbles. Please do continue, Miss Mirabelle.”

Stunned by his careless
attitude towards the disrespect of the journalist, Kath continued
slower than before. “The continually-studied yellow beam, he
claims, consists of matter which is traveling faster than the speed
of light—a superluminal comet. If his theory proves correct, he’ll
have Albert Einstein turning in his grave for defusing his
heretofore unchallenged Theory of Relativity.”

After a brief pause,
Zimmer indicated to Kath, “If you wouldn’t mind, Miss Mirabelle,
please read the last paragraph as well.”

“
Ironically, it was this
same Dr. Zimmer who—years earlier—was quoted as saying, ‘it would
be absurd to assume that anything could ever travel faster than the
speed of light. There is a good reason why we’ve never observed
such travel—it is because it simply cannot occur.’ Now Zimmer finds
himself in the awkward position of having to prove Einstein—and
himself—wrong.”

“
You see, Miss Mirabelle,”
Zimmer now got to the point. “There is nothing shameful about
challenging my position. In fact, they used the same word that you
did, ‘absurd.’ The criticism is coming from everywhere. Am I truly
warped? Is my position preposterous? Certainly!” Leaning over the
table was an effective mechanism for gaining every bit of attention
of his students. “Until I can prove otherwise.” He sat back up,
waiting for the questions to begin.

“
Can you?” asked
Reyd.

“
Easily, Mr. Eastman. The
data is very convincing, and once I’ve had a chance to convey it
properly in a paper that will be published in the Journal of
Astrophysics, some—but not all—of the disbelief will be
assuaged.”

“
What do you mean by
‘some’, Professor?” asked Joram.

“
Mr.
Anders, I will be able to show evidence that the material that
created that beam is traveling faster than the speed of light. But,
I still won’t be able to prove
how
that is happening. I do have some speculation,
but scientists will continue to live in denial of the claim until
they are shown how this phenomenon occurs.”

“
But, how did you solve
that, Professor? And what evidence will you list in the paper to
prove it?”

Zimmer’s expression
clouded over, and Kath slowly turned her head to assess what the
astrophysicist was studying on the wall behind her. Finding
nothing, she turned back to realize that Zimmer was caught up in a
thought, or perhaps a memory, which caused him deep
concern.

“
A few years ago,” Zimmer
began with a slow hoarse whisper, still staring at the wall behind
him, “I met someone who—”

All three students leaned
in closer to the table when Zimmer paused mid-sentence. Returning
from somewhere else, Zimmer blinked, smiled, and looked one after
the other at the trio of graduate students seated before him. “I
met two men who tried to convince me that Hyperwarp travel is
feasible. They were very convincing. I was certain that they knew
it could be done.”

Reyd asked curiously. “Why
haven’t they published their findings, if they were so
convincing?”

“
Because… they were
silenced.”

Kath gasped as a dark
expression clouded Zimmer’s face.

“
You mean—they were paid
off?” Reyd suggested the most positive meaning for Zimmer’s
ambiguity after giving a concerned look in Kath’s
direction.

Zimmer sighed and shrugged
his shoulders. “I never did get a straight answer from them as to
what happened, but I have a suspicion that they will come out and
share everything... it’s a fascinating story.”

Quickly changing the
subject, Zimmer stood up, and returned to the topic of their
research. “Let me come back to the subject at hand. You asked, Ms.
Mirabelle, how I came to realize that we were dealing with a
superluminal body. You see, shortly after paddle nine ceased
communicating with the USL, there was one final heartbeat received
from it. There were at least three things that didn’t add up.
First, the timestamp of the final blip indicated a time on the
clock that was too early. Relativistic experiments show that the
clock of an object approaching the speed of light will slow down.
This clock had obviously slowed down significantly. Second, the
modulated signal was recovered at an ultra-low frequency,
indicating a huge Doppler shift. The paddle was still alive, but it
was booking. Third, the positional information conveyed in that
final blip indicated that the paddle had already traveled farther
down the beam than it possibly could have in the allowed time. As a
result, I concluded that the beam had a force that was quickly
accelerating the paddles to a velocity approaching the speed of
light, but in order to accelerate an object with significant mass
to near the speed of light, the material in the beam must have been
traveling
faster
than the speed of light itself.”

After giving the students
a chance to digest this epiphany, he continued. “Then there were
paddles eleven and twelve. Remember how quickly paddle eleven
turned downstream and spun out of control? Even Kath’s paddle
twelve gained acceleration way too quickly for mission control to
handle it. Based on the amount of impact that was collected by the
paddles’ sensors, the acceleration was simply too fast. The
material that was powering those paddles must have been traveling
faster than the speed of light.”

“
But we saw the material
in the beam… it was glowing yellow. How would we be able to see it
if it traveled faster than the speed of light?” Kath pointed out
with more curiosity than skepticism.

“
Yes, you did see material
in the beam, but that wasn’t the stuff that was propelling the
paddles. What powered the acceleration was material you could not
see. The paddles were able to detect this matter, but it could not
identify it.”

Zimmer turned to look out
the window and weighed his thoughts before turning back to the
table. “I trust that all of you have studied at least basic
particle physics in your undergraduate programs?”

All three heads
nodded.

“
Good… then you are aware
that the quantum state of particles can be altered. For example, it
is the weak nuclear force that causes radioactive decay, inducing
some of the heavier elements to shed protons and neutrons, thus
changing their atomic structure. At the sub-atomic level,
fundamental particles can decay into entirely different fundamental
particles. I surmise that the superluminal comet which is currently
orbiting the black hole at the center of our Milky Way consists of
a very large clump of quantum material. As the particles on the
surface decay, they do so from a state which is able to travel
faster than the speed of light to a state which is not able to
travel faster than the speed of light. Once they have decayed into
this state, they must decelerate quickly, shedding off energy in
the form of photons which we are able to see with our very
eyes.”

“
But what is the stuff
that we can’t see, and how can it break the rules of relativity to
travel faster than the speed of light?” asked Joram.

“
Ah that
is the question, isn’t it?” Zimmer pointed out. “Scientists, in
general, think we know so much more about the universe than we
really do. For example, for all of our observational astrophysics,
we really can only see less than five percent of the universe. The
remainder consists of dark matter and dark energy. Thus, for all of
our knowledge about this universe, it may only apply to the five
percent we can actually see. Do all of the discovered laws of
physics apply to the other 95%? For example, we know that dark
matter is subject to gravity. It clearly exerts gravitational
forces, because that is how we detected it in the first place.
Otherwise, we have no way of explaining the gravitational effects
on the universe without introducing the concept of dark matter.
Now, while this unseen substance is subject to gravity, it does not
interact with the photon—the carrier for the electromagnetic force.
If it were subject to electromagnetism, we would be able to detect
its presence on the EM spectrum, but we cannot. Let me define the
term ‘observational physics’ to therefore mean the set of universal
laws which apply to everything
which can
be observed
. Traditionally that which can
be observed is subject to light so that we can see it. Light is
nothing more than the electromagnetic force, demonstrated through
its carrier, the photon. The reason that nothing observable can
travel faster than the speed of light is because it is
subject to light
.”