Mission of the Argo: WARNING - Finding your roots can cause dismay

By Bob Springett

Generations have passed and there is still no sign of the Creators. Radio telescopes have provided no hints. Meanwhile rocketry has improved and there is now the technical feasibility of going out into deep space themselves. Further development in theoretical physics has also opened up the possibility of time travel, but this takes enormous ener

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen Culture Solutions
• Release date: Apr 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638122630

Book preview

Sofieburg

Year 1139

The Antipodean Records and genetic research had established centuries ago that all humans on Erde were the descendants of four pairs of First Parents placed on the planet by an alien race known as ‘The Creators’. It was also known from that same archaeological site that Erde was the second planet where the creators had planted life after leaving their own world. The two journeys had involved transit times of about fifty years and thirty years. It was still not known what a ‘year’ meant to the creators and this was not necessarily the same as a year on Erde, but a rough equivalence could be assumed until better data was available. Other hints suggested that they typically travelled at about 20% lightspeed.

Taken all together, that most likely meant that there was another seeded planet within six light-years and that their home planet was about ten light-years from that. Maximum fifteen light-years and probably closer unless they had travelled in a straight line, assuming their years were of similar length to those on Erde. Radio telescopes were built and aimed at stars within that radius, to no avail. These were replaced by bigger and better radio telescopes, generation after generation. The sky remained stubbornly silent.

What else could be done? Everyone knew that these planets would be forever impossible to detect at optical wavelengths.

Astronomers were dreaming of a Long Baseline Interferometer to be placed into solar orbit specifically to serve this purpose. This would have three large telescope mirrors set in an equilateral triangular frame measuring more than a kilopace each side. This would provide enough angular resolution to isolate and analyse planetary spectrographs in wavelengths well into the infra-red. Some dream! No-one had even put a satellite into a sustainable low Erde orbit yet. The presence of the Sister in close binary orbit with Erde made such orbits unstable. The cost and complexity of developing rocket technology purely to satisfy what would almost certainly be a vain hope was not high on anyone’s agenda.

But now there had been a breakthrough. Perhaps there was a way that might not be any cheaper, but would be much more certain. Certain enough to justify that cost.

It had taken the life work of the best minds in the world. It now seemed that time travel rather than space travel or radio communication might be an option. A team of the best scientists and engineers alive had staked their reputations on this venture, but it would require the resources of the entire planet if adopted. Ciara Lucia could only hope it was going to work because her reputation was at the top of the list and therefore the most vulnerable.

Take a seat, Ciara, Heida smiled professionally. I’ve read through the file but I’m the first to admit that Physics is not my strong point. This confession was not entirely accurate. Heida’s first degree had been in Physics but she had then changed career path into Finance and Administration and then Politics. If you could please explain the Project from the basics upwards I think we would work together much more smoothly.

I’d be glad to, my Lady...

Please, just ‘Heida’

Thank you, Heida, Ciara smiled. In summary, time is just another dimension, at right angles to our three spatial dimensions. All we have to do is twist space-time through 90 degrees so time becomes one of the spatial dimensions, then push our payload along that spatial dimension.

Oh! Nothing to it! Heida waved a hand.

The only problem is that it requires huge amounts of energy and mind-numbingly precise co-ordination, and when space-time snaps back into its proper alignment it releases ripples in space-time similar to gravitational waves that would shake the planet apart and emit enough gamma-ray energy to fry the rubble.

So it’s the sort of thing you can only do once? Heida continued the mock-casual approach.

More accurately, it’s the sort of thing you can only do a long way away from anything with life on it. That’s why we need to master deep space travel as a preliminary step. We need to be able to get at least a few light-hours out before we twist, possibly light-days, and then get back safely.

And that’s why we’re talking such a big budget, Heida finished the train of thought, but this time seriously.

It’ll be worth it, Ciara assured her. Think of all the progress that was made by our societies simply by picking through the rubbish the creators left behind on the Antipodean Islands. We expect a much richer haul if we go to the source itself.

Heida had heard this already. It was what she called the ‘glossy brochure’ presentation that could be heard in any of the public appearances given by Ciara in her efforts to put the Project into the public’s eye and therefore onto the government payroll.

But there is still no experimental evidence that this is even possible.

We have the theory. All we need now is the research programme to prove the technology.

Unless it’s impossible.

Lots of things are impossible, my Lady, Ciara said lightly. "Like humans crossing the seas from one continent to another, or flying, or travelling faster than the sound of their own passage. ‘Impossible’ is a brick wall, and until you get up close you can’t see the cracks in it. So I pulled together a few friends and we started poking at the cracks.

Heinz Leilah, the Professor of Physics at Big River, was one of these friends. He had too much to drink one night and woke up with an idea about how to twist space. All that’s needed is a gamma-ray laser with circular polarisation. If focussed, this will twist space-time first to the right and then to the left at just the right frequency for a resonance to build up…

But a gamma-ray laser is impossible! Heida interrupted. The wavelength is less than the diameter of an atom, so how can you build a laser resonator that small?

Heinz has already built one on a micro scale, enough to drill a tiny hole in a block of granite. Ciara smiled. But it might not be wise to scale this up until we can get into deep space.

Heida frowned. OK. That’s a long way from proof of feasibility, but I’ll take it as proof of concept. How far out do you need to go?

That depends on the size of the vehicle. The design for that is still way into the future.

So humour me, Heida pressed.

We start by recognising that whatever we time-shift has to be able to get back to us so we can see what happened to it, Ciara started. So it has to have an engine and enough fuel and reaction mass to get back from deep space. This means a minimum size of total payload to be time-shifted. And the larger the diameter of the payload, the further away we have to send it to be able to time-shift safely, which means a bigger vehicle to have the fuel and reaction mass to get back to us. So you can see that the whole problem snowballs.

And progress so far?

Our theoretical people tell us to not even bother with chemical rockets. They want to use atomic hydrogen as the reactant mass because this has the highest possible specific impulse for any given mass and temperature. Right now we’re working on ways of making this as hot as possible. We’re thinking in terms of an old idea first proposed by Ronja Lucia eighty years ago, a nuclear fission pile passing hydrogen through it as coolant, then directing it out the exhaust.

But don’t fission piles weight too much?

Yes. We’re working on making them as light as possible and running them as hot as possible. But that creates its own problems in terms of stability.

Heida frowned again. Assuming that you solve these problems and you get your target engine performance, what’s the latest best estimate on the overall shape of the Project?

Tentatively, we have in mind a probe of about six paces in radius. This is because a twist is much like a black hole but in reverse. At the twist radius everything is sweet, but quasi-tidal distortions increase exponentially towards the centre, roughly to the inverse fourth power of the radius. The inner three-quarters of the total radius will be subjected to the most extreme quasi-tidal disruptions, so everything has to fit within the outer quarter of the sphere’s radius. The smallest we can make an effective pile and engine is just under one pace high, so that sets the minimum scale of the whole vehicle. And we have to store all our reaction mass as well as our instruments and the engine and reactor inside that safer outer shell. The best delta-v we expect to get out of this will be around one percent of lightspeed, probably less. And to ensure the gravity waves and gamma-ray burst are far enough away to not be a problem, we’re looking at perhaps a tenth of a light-year.

So you have to spread one percent of delta-v around among four thrust phases, Heida continued the thought. First you need to accelerate to get out there, then to stop and twist, and then come home with another acceleration and deceleration phase. Assuming you spread that delta-v between the four stages, that’s a quarter of one percent of lightspeed each, which means an eighty-year trip.

No, it’s much more complicated than that, Ciara corrected her. "We have to get the twister and slider out there too, with all the fuel they’ll need. Let me explain the total mission in reverse because it makes more sense that way.

"The probe I just described will use all its fuel to decelerate. That allows all that delta-v to be used to decelerate from a higher approach speed. In this preliminary scenario that means a ten-year return journey. To do that it needs to be already heading back when it does the twist. So the main probe will need a vehicle to carry it out there and then give it a kick-start back towards home.

"The return acceleration vehicle, which will be destroyed by the gravity and gamma-ray burst of the twist, will have to include the twister and slider with the probe nested inside. It will also need an engine, probably four or more of them, with enough fuel to get this whole larger mass accelerated towards home. But at least it can be filled completely, even the central three-quarters of its radius, because it doesn’t have to work after the twist. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be spherical.

"This return acceleration vehicle will have to be able to provide enough delta-v to stop the outward velocity and then accelerate it up to return velocity. In fact we’re currently expecting to make this two separate vehicles so we don’t have to re-accelerate all that hardware that decelerated the outward trip. We’re still doing the calculations on optimising that. And then we’ll need a monster vehicle to get all of this moving outwards in the first place. So we’re talking about at least three and probably a four-stage vehicle, each stage very much larger than the assembly sitting on top of it. It will be huge.

Such a large machine will be too heavy to leave the surface of the planet. It will have to be built in orbit with the parts lifted up there by dozens of chemical rockets. We will also have to carry workers up there to do the assembly, and that means food, air, water and some way of getting them back down again safely. Ciara stopped. Heida had raised a hand. She looked stunned, daunted by such a huge concept. At last she gained her tongue.

All that, just for a test run before you even think about the main mission. And I thought the budget number in the prospective summary Maria gave me was a typo, that the word should have been ‘millions’, not ‘billions’. Out by a factor of a thousand. She shook her head. But it was serious.

This is a project that will need the resources of the whole planet, Heida. And it will give us a bigger payoff than can be imagined.

And you’re going to build it in space, Heida was still overawed. But no-one has even put a payload into a stable orbit yet. Is it possible?

I’ve already told you, Heida. The ‘impossible’ is a brick wall until you get close enough to see the cracks. Ciara smiled again. We intend to use chemical rockets for lifting things off the surface. They’re not efficient in terms of specific impulse but at least all that grunt can be put out in a hurry. The big question is finding an orbit high enough to not suffer too much atmospheric drag but low enough to be stable despite the Sister. That’s the first question and we’ll work forward from there. But don’t worry. We’ll find the cracks in that wall. If not, we’ll make a few of our own.

Chapter Two

Sofieburg

Year 1146 (7 Years later)

Greta was paraded in front of the cameras in triumph. She had survived! She was without doubt the fastest snake in the world. She was now emblematic of the Project, with any number of catchphrases springing up about her ‘going where no snake has ever set foot’ and the like. She wrapped herself more closely around Ciara’s shoulders in response to the noise and movement around her. Ciara gave her another bug to munch on.

We had cameras and instrumentation on her for the whole flight and there was never any serious distress. We noticed elevated heart rate and blood pressure during the high-acceleration phase during the launch and again during the heaviest phase of re-entry, but no worse than in the centrifuges here on the surface. Most significantly, the zero-gravity phase that can’t be duplicated on Erde caused no problems at all.

The Project Management knew the importance of public support for any success along the way, but wanted to keep control. More than a dozen cameras had been allowed to cover this recovery operation but only from behind a barrier several paces away. One designated interviewer was permitted on the basis of her feed being available to all. Magda Lara was going to make the most of this lucky break. She would use it to promote her own career as an interviewer as much as the Project. She was determined to ask sensible, intelligent questions and had already rehearsed several against a friend who knew her physics.

"But the zero-gravity phase has been duplicated here on Erde, in the famous ‘Pukeplane’ trials that deliberately flew in vertical parabolas, she challenged. So what made this different?"

This was not just a momentary falling sensation, Ciara answered, her opinion of Magda rising two notches immediately. This journalist was more than a television face. This period of apparent weightlessness lasted for almost two hours. That allowed enough time for it to become the new normal. Long enough for Greta, who is a very adaptable girl, Ciara stroked her pet.

The next step is to see if her next batch of eggs and snakelings is normal. If we have problems then we’ll take notice. But if everything turns out fine we might put her up again for a much longer mission, perhaps even an entire reproductive cycle.

Is it possible to launch a long-duration mission? I’ve heard that the Sister’s gravity makes a stable orbit impossible.

‘Impossible’ is my favourite word, Ciara smiled. ‘Impossible’ is a brick wall, until you get close enough to see the cracks. Then she became serious. She waved away a follow-up question as Magda was about to ask it. A genuinely long-term stable orbit probably is impossible unless we provide frequent corrections. But finding an orbit that can last a couple of months is not that difficult. If we don’t put the probe exactly into the sweet spot, we can make station-keeping corrections. That should be long enough for Greta to go through a complete cycle. That should give us good data that we might be able to extrapolate to humans. Then the next step might be to put up a juvenile pair so we can see the effect of the whole mating and laying cycle in zero-gravity. Not that the Reachback mission is intended to take so long that this would be part of the planning.

On that different aspect of Reachback, Doctor; we know that putting animals into space, and eventually humans, is not the purpose of this programme. That’s only a necessary step to sending humans back in time to meet the Creators. Have you heard the latest comments from Doctor Hedwig Emma from Big River School of Philosophy? She says the whole project is a monumental waste of money because it’s logically impossible to travel through time without causing paradoxes.

It’s good to hear such wisdom from such a noted Scientist, Ciara answered caustically. Perhaps we can discuss her opinion tomorrow, when we have both proven her wrong by travelling forwards in time by one more day.

"But really, Doctor, I’m sure you’re aware of the critique she has offered. Her claim is that if anyone could go back to get the technology of the creators, they wouldn’t have to take the risk of the mission failing as they tried bringing that information back with them. They could place it somewhere secure in a capsule to wait for us and we could just go where they told us they would leave it and collect it now. Just in case they have an accident coming back home.

And if they’re going to do that, then we can go and dig it up now rather than waiting until the expedition leaves. And once we collect it, why go to the expense of sending back the expedition anyway? Which means that expedition never goes back, so we never get that technology, so we’re back where we started. The only logical solution to this paradox is the conclusion that such an expedition can’t possibly succeed. Carla finished the exposition of Helwig’s critique.

I’m a scientist, Ciara answered. If I want to find out something about how the universe works, I run an experiment. I don’t just sit in a darkened room and gaze at my own navel. I wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark anyway. Ciara smiled almost maliciously. Philosophers can speculate all they like about how the universe works because they believe they’re smart enough to know everything without having to discover the facts first. We scientists are much humbler. We have to check what we believe against Reality. A much harsher test than peer-review by some other navel-gazer in some other darkened room. That should get the scales flying, Ciara thought to herself. Any publicity is good publicity.

Would you describe Doctor Lisbet Anna as a navel-gazer too? She’s perhaps the leading physicist in the world. She is of the opinion that merely observing the past could alter it. So positively interacting with it could be catastrophic.

I’m familiar with Doctor Lisbet’s position, Ciara replied. She makes that speculation – and she freely concedes that it’s only speculation – on the basis of the Sophieburg Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. But despite Quantum Mechanics being the one of most tested and verified scientific theories in history, all these tests have been at the sub-atomic level. Every experiment at the macroscopic level suggests that the principle doesn’t hold up when the number of particles involved in any one observation becomes statistically significant. At that level, everything averages out. But as I said a few moments ago, let’s try the experiment and see what we discover. I’ll believe an actual observation rather than a purely logical deduction any day of the month.

And how is the time-travel side of the project going? What observations have you made so far? Magda put ever-so-slight emphasis on ‘observations’ as she asked.

Ciara smiled to acknowledge this emphasis. Very well so far. Professor Heinz Leilah constructed his gamma-ray laser just over a month ago. You might recall that there were sceptics who said a gamma-ray laser was impossible, because the normal vibrations in the atoms of the apparatus itself would be enough to destroy the resonance of wavelengths that were only thousandths of the diameter of an atom. Adding circular polarisation to such short wavelengths would also be impossible, so we were told.

But Professor Heinz has achieved this?

The impossible is a brick wall, until you get close enough to see the cracks, Ciara responded with her byword and a smile. Heinz has knocked a hole through that wall. The next step is to link three of them to act in phase, another ‘impossible’ objective. Heinz expects to achieve that later this month.

Thank you, Doctor. And thank you, Greta, for your patience too, Magda stroked the snake as she ended the discussion. She was confident that she had made an impression as competent and knowledgeable, the perfect interviewer of experts. And she had run out of rehearsed questions that would seem to flow naturally in the conversation. Better to achieve too little than to attempt too much. She turned to the cameras. We have been talking with Doctor Ciara Lucia, Chief Scientist of the Reachback Project.

Word came back to Ciara quickly. Her unseemly criticism of Hedwig Emma was considered poor form. She was told that an inter-disciplinary spat among intellectuals would only harm both sides, so she should cool it. She didn’t take this well, so Heida, the political appointee chairing the Project Committee, came in over the top and quietly told her to muzzle it. Hedwig Emma had friends in high places, friends that should not be turned against the Project. In fact, Hedwig had even dropped hints about going into politics herself.

So the Committee decided to make provision for the unknowns of metaphysics to placate this criticism. It decided that no mission to the past would be permitted to leave information that could possibly be detected before the date of the mission launch. But the naysayers still objected. How can you ensure that in some future expedition some intrepid explorer won’t accidentally leave something behind that would be evidence of an anachronism? Even a discarded shoe lace? Yet we have found none. Therefore, it can’t have happened. It would be ridiculous to assume that every expedition throughout all future ages is going to be absolutely perfect in its temporal hygiene. The absence of any such anachronism was itself proof that the whole idea was an illusion. Otherwise at least some trace of the thousands of expeditions that will be launched from our future into our past would have been found by now.

This left the Project Management with only one possible response. It simply told the critics that lack of anachronistic evidence demonstrated how effective the Committee’s procedures would be. A bold bluff!

Magda Lara here. Magda answered her phone ten days later.

Ciara Lucia here, Magda. Would you like to attend our first attempt to twist space?

Would I ever! Where? When? This was the opportunity of a lifetime!

The nay-sayers won’t let us do it in Heinz’ workshop in Big River, and Heinz agrees. They and he agree that we do it as far away as possible. So we intend to use the Deep South station in Parvatia. We can fly in, take perhaps five days to set up and fire, then fly out. We leave in six days’ time.

Is there room on your plane for an outside broadcast team? That’s me, a sound techie and a camera operator? Plus our gear, of course.

Not a problem, Magda. But the Committee will insist that you serve as universal feed for all networks, just like for the Greta interview.

Fair enough. I’ll let my management know. Could you please send me an email with times, dates, places, so I can forward it to them?

I’ll do that in the next few minutes. I’ll see you soon, Magda.

The lab was a portable shed set up some twenty kilopaces away from the main base. The ‘twister’ looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. It was a bulky circular steel frame some three paces in diameter, with three sets of apparatus fixed on the ribs and almost meeting at right angles. Technicians were making fine adjustments to their alignment with tiny screws. Magda’s cameras were recording everything as they worked. The files could be edited later.

Ready for test alignment, Professor, the lead technician reported.

Right, Jacques. Get everyone clear and go through the sequence.

Magda stepped into shot, Professor, what is this step designed to do?

Hi, Magda. This step involves firing off the three lasers one at a time, and recording their precise aiming point. The ‘twist’, as we call it, requires all three lasers firing at the same point in space, and the three all being in phase at that point. So we first need to ensure that they are all aligned closely enough for them to interact. We use these test firing measurements to adjust any misalignment, and then test-fire again until we get the alignment right. The power supply is set up so it’s impossible to fire more than one laser at a time, and only at vastly reduced level, so this is not dangerous. We only hook up for full power when all alignments are right and it’s time for the experiment.

How accurately do they need to be aligned?

Ideally within about a picopace, or one thousandth of a nanopace. That’s roughly one twenty-fifth of the radius of a hydrogen atom. But we expect that within four or five picopaces should be enough to get a result.

That’s an impossibly small margin for error, Professor! How can a full-scale probe, or a starship, hope to align their equipment so accurately?

It’ll be easier for a starship. Remember, this is a matter of twisting space first one way and then the opposite way very quickly, and letting it resonate. That’s why the gamma rays are used, because they are the only way we can apply input energy that reverses direction at the high frequency required. It’s also why they have to be circularly polarised, so they impart a twist to the energy. The bigger the radius of the piece of spacetime we are twisting, the lower the resonant frequency, the larger the interaction cross-section of the gamma rays at that frequency, so the more room for error in targeting. This test firing is for a twist radius of ten nanopaces, corresponding to the highest gamma ray frequencies we can manage. We chose that because we wanted to input as little energy as possible, for safety reasons. Everything larger than this will be easier, but will need more power.

Then why not do the easy tests first?

"Because the bigger the radius, the more energy needed even at the lower frequency. That energy doesn’t disappear. It gets released when the twist collapses. We still don’t know for sure how that energy will be released. It might be as a wave in space-time, like a gravitational