Stellarium (Origins): A Space-Time Adventure to the Ends of our Universe (3 page)

“Allison, that’s great! I’m even
happier now than I was when I received the Nobel Prize a few hours ago! Indeed,
everything seems to have advanced so much and so quickly. Up until a few years
ago, we were still trying to prove my theory; now, we’re talking about sending
humans through wormholes and visiting a planet where there might have been
life?! That’s spectacular!” exclaimed Hardt excitedly.

The old astrophysicist stopped
for a minute. He patted his jacket, looking for a handkerchief, and brought it
to his face. He was thrilled. He had dedicated more than 50 years of his life
to science. He would be turning 70 soon, and he was really happy to see this
happening during his lifetime.

“I’m sorry, Allison, this is just
so much new information for an old astrophysicist. When will the mission be?”
asked Hardt, drinking a bit of the water that he had yet to touch.

“Dr. Hardt, the mission will be
launched one year from now. And I’ll be on it. That’s the big news that I
wanted to share with you. Of course, I traveled from the United States to Switzerland
to be here for your award ceremony... but also because I wanted to tell you
about all this face-to-face.”

“Allison, you mean that you’re
going to be one of the astronauts? Aboard the first human mission to another
galaxy, traveling through a wormhole?”

“Yes! There will be three
astronauts. One of them will be the navigator specializing in the topology of
parts of the universe that, up until now, have only ever been studied by
probes... and someone familiar with the Draco Galaxy. They didn’t hesitate to
ask me if I wanted the position. I’m going to spend the next 12 months in
training,” she explained.

“Plus,” she continued, “ever
since I moved to Houston ten years ago, traveling to work at the
Johnson Space Center
every day,
I’ve always considered the possibility of going to space some day,” she
explained with a twinkle in her eye.

“I’m so happy for you, Allison! I
know that this is extremely risky, but I can tell from the look on your face
that you are happy. I can’t remember having seen you this way since Ed passed
away...”

At that moment, Allison’s head
fell a bit, her eyes shifted toward the table, and her happiness seemed to lose
a bit of its shine. Allison didn’t have children, but she had once had a
husband. She had gotten married shortly after having moved to Houston. However,
a car accident had separated them. Allison tried not to talk about it. She had
devoted herself solely to her work during that time, but Edward was always in
her thoughts.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” said
Allison. “I’m going to spend Christmas with my mom. I’ll be back to the States
in January. But, before that—before Christmas, actually—NASA will announce the
new program. I hope to see you again before the launch.”

“Of course, Allison. We’ll be in
touch. I’m sure I’ll be in Houston before you leave. It’s getting a little late
for me, as well. Let’s go. I’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

For Allison, it was great to have
seen Dr. Hardt again. He was a good friend of hers, despite the fact that they
didn’t speak very often. By that time, Allison had put down roots in the United
States; she had plenty of friends, and she had long been a U.S. citizen, but,
regardless, she missed her home country. She usually traveled to Brazil every
two or three years to visit her mom, but this was the first time that she would
make the trip with the feeling that it might be the last.

A few weeks later, Allison
celebrated Christmas. Childhood friends came to visit her, and she helped her
mom put up the Christmas tree. She was able to once again enjoy the little
things in life; the small town where she had grown up seemed just the same as
before. Very little had changed. The same ice cream shop, the same bakery on
the corner, everything was pretty much the same.

Allison had been in Brazil for
two weeks when NASA announced its plans. The Brazilian media sought her out
immediately. She started doing interviews, explaining how the mission would
work. Her country was proud that an astronaut born there would be part of the
first mission to another galaxy, despite the fact that Allison, who had long
ago become a naturalized citizen, would be representing the United States.

Before heading back to the United
States, the high school where Allison had studied invited her to speak to the
students. The idea was for her to tell them a bit about her background, explain
the most recent advances in astrophysics, including the mechanism that made the
creation of wormholes possible, and inform them on a few of the trip details.
She accepted without thinking twice about it.

It was a classroom full of
teenagers who were preparing to take their college entrance exam. She would be
happy to give back to the place that had taught her so much, all while setting
an example for these youth.

So, the morning before her flight
back to Houston, Allison spent almost four hours in a classroom with about 30
students. Many of them had studied the subject and came prepared with
questions.

Allison described much of what
she had already explained to Dr. Hardt, but the students were most interested
in how the technology worked:

“So, before we can talk about how
NASA is going to send astronauts to another galaxy, we need to talk about
gravity. Who can tell me what gravity is?” asked Allison, looking around the
room.

Several students raised their
hands, a few of them responding at the same time, without waiting to be called
on. The answer that most of them gave, almost simultaneously, was the classic
one: gravity is a force that attracts bodies, and which is proportional to the
mass of those bodies (the greater the mass, the greater the gravitational
pull), and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them
(the greater the distance, the lesser the pull). But this wasn’t the answer
that Allison was looking for.

“That’s correct. But I want to
take a more philosophical approach to gravity. Let’s think about it like
Einstein did long ago: imagine that the universe is a huge mattress. Imagine if
you were to place several balls on that mattress—a pool ball, a tennis ball, a
soccer ball, a golf ball, a bowling ball, and a few ping pong balls. You would
see all of the balls sink into the mattress a bit. In fact, the heavier the
ball, and, thus, the greater the weight, the greater the deformation that it
would cause in the mattress. Now, imagine if you were to place an extremely
heavy steel ball in the middle of the mattress. This would cause such a huge
deformation—this ball would sink so far into the mattress—that all the balls
around it would start rolling toward it. This is the concept related to gravity
that I want to talk about with you all,” said Allison.

“In this example,” she continued,
“the greater the weight of the body sitting on the mattress, which, in this
case, represents the fabric of the universe, the greater its attractive force.
Now, imagine that this ball is much heavier... for example, a bowling ball that
weighs a ton. What would happen?”

A student in the front row
responded emphatically: “It would sink down so far, and would cause a
deformation so huge in the mattress, that all the balls would roll toward it.”

“Exactly! We can call that ball a
‘black hole’. Its gravitational force is so strong that it attracts everything
around it. Now, imagine if that ball, which weighs a ton, was the size of the
tip of a needle. What would happen?”

“It would puncture the mattress!”
said a kid in the back, causing the rest of the class to burst into laughter.

“Correct!” said Allison, to
everyone’s surprise, “that’s exactly what would happen! At first, it might not
puncture the mattress. In other words, that heavy ball would deform the
mattress and cause the rest of balls to roll in its direction, attracted by its
gravity... but as soon as it went through, the mattress would go back to its
original shape and that gravity would disappear. The point I’m trying to make
here is that this tiny but extremely heavy ball, a mini-black hole, given its
huge gravity, would puncture and pass through the mattress, or, in this case,
space... and would end up on the other side.”

The students were clearly
surprised. “Is that what the spaceship does?” the teacher asked, just as
curious as her students.

“Yes,” replied Allison. But,
first, let’s talk a bit more about space.”

So, the astronomer continued:

“I asked you all to imagine space
as a mattress, right? Now, we’re going to switch things up a bit. Let’s imagine
that space is a sheet, and that this sheet is spread out on the ground. There
is an ant at one end of the sheet. Let’s imagine that this ant is us, and that
it wants to get to the other side. So, for that ant, the universe is a flat
sheet, spread out on the ground. The only way to get to the other side is to
walk across the sheet, which, for the ant, would be quite a long journey.”

“However,” Allison went on,
pausing for a moment to take a sip of water, “despite the fact that the little
ant thinks that the universe is spread out on the floor, in truth, the sheet
isn’t spread out, but is actually all crumpled and piled up, as if it were
ready to be thrown in the laundry. Nonetheless, the ant, which, in this
example, lives in a two-dimensional world and can’t see any of this, would
start walking in a straight line and would get to the other side, traveling
over the entire terrain without realizing it. However, if that ant wanted to
travel more quickly, it could create a tiny, little hole in the sheet, fall
down to a lower layer, make another little hole, and fall one more layer down,
until it eventually got to the other side. The other side of the universe—or of
the sheet—might be just millimeters away from the ant... all it has to do is
create holes, or shortcuts, to travel through the sheet. Later, if we were to
spread the sheet out on the ground, we would see a series of little holes in
seemingly random places, but which in reality were connected to each other and
which the ant had used as shortcuts. It’s like entering at one end of the sheet
and exiting at another point in the middle. That’s exactly what the spaceship
does: it travels through space using holes, wormholes, with the fifth dimension.”

“But, Dr. Scheffer, how does the
ship do that? How does it know where it has to go?” asked a student who didn’t
look very convinced.

“Guys, you can call me Allison,
none of that doctor stuff, okay?” said the speaker with an informal tone and a
smile, as always. “So, to sum things up a bit, a physicist developed a theory
about how the acceleration of dark matter creates a gravitational wave,
distorting space. One of his hypotheses posited that, if we were able to
accelerate a huge amount of dark matter around a circular tunnel, a sort of
huge ring—like the CERN particle accelerator in Europe—for a very short amount
of time, we would be able to create a huge gravitational point that would
distort space and create a ‘hole’. This would have to last for much less than a
second. It would be instantaneous... and, at that point, we’d have to turn off
the accelerator. In other words, it’s like a pinprick in space. You turn on the
accelerator and the hole is created, then you turn off the accelerator and the
hole closes... and, after all that, you hope to end up on the right side.”

“And how do you get the spaceship
to the other side? I mean, how do you go through the wormhole?” asked the
teacher, a little embarrassed.

“With ‘probability’, responded
Allison. “I say that because it really is a question of probability. The
classical description of a wormhole includes a black hole on one end and a
white hole on the other. One side sucks matter in, and the other expels it.
However, we were never able to recreate that concept. So, we changed our
strategy: we decided to try to create black holes that would connect two
different points in space, and then turn off the accelerator, with the
expectation that the spaceship would be on the other side once the hole closed.
This would only be possible if the spaceship “becomes” the black hole. In other
words, in this case, the ship doesn’t move in space. What it does is create a
mini-black hole around itself, thus opening the hole in space and then
immediately closing it. Upon closing, there is a 50% chance of the ship having
stayed in the same place, and a 50% chance of it having gone to the other side.
There is no way to control it. So, the probes that we have sent thus far always
had enough energy for several activations. If they ended up staying in the same
place after carrying out this process, they would attempt it a second time.
Usually, when they weren’t able to ‘jump’ to the other side of space on the
first try, they were almost always able to do so the second time around.”

“And why were all those probes
shaped like flying disks?” asked a curious young man behind extremely heavy
glasses.

“So they could pretend to be
aliens!” yelled a voice from the back, getting a laugh out of everyone in the
room.

“That’s a very good question,”
said Allison to the laughing students. “You all really studied quite a lot for
this talk, didn’t you? There are lots of pictures of the probes of the
Stellarium space program at NASA. So, let me explain: dark matter must be
accelerated in a circle, which is why the ship has a sort of ring around its
exterior. So, we use the tubes in that ring to accelerate the matter through
electromagnetism. What happens is that the gravitational disturbance occurs
around that ring, becoming larger in the center, like a disk. So, the most
efficient shape for the ship—and the simplest one—would be a disk. However, for
a manned mission, the ship will need to be quite large, which is why it will
look more like a sphere. It will have two perpendicular rings. This means that
the gravitational disturbance that will be created will be more like a sphere.
In fact, the more rings the ship has, the more spherical its gravitational
field will be. And the bigger the ship, the more rings it needs.”

A student interrupted: “So, if
you were to make a giant ship, for example, and you had to make it with eight
of those rings, the ship would end up looking like that picture on the wall?”

The student pointed to a classic
depiction of an atom, with a round core surrounded by circles with electron
orbits.

“Exactly,” said Allison, “that’s
a great example. The ship would look like this classical picture of an atom.
However, in our case, in order to reduce costs, NASA limited the size of the
ship, meaning we’ll only need two rings, one horizontal and one vertical, both
making their way around the entire ship.”

At this point, the teacher
realized how late it was, and thanked Dr. Allison for coming, but one student
wanted to know if he could ask one more question:

“Ms. Allison, just one more
question: once you all have gone through the black hole, or the wormhole, as
you explained before, how will you communicate with Earth?”

“That’s also an excellent
question! Once we are on the other side, there’s no way to communicate with
Earth. The ship has a Communication Module, but that’s for us to use before we
go through the wormhole. Once we arrive at the point in space where the jump is
supposed to happen—that has to be at least two times the distance between the
Earth and the moon away, to make sure we don’t create a black hole too close to
our atmosphere—this module is undocked. It remains about 1,000 feet from the
ship, with sensors and cameras pointed in our direction. The control center in
Houston observes everything from that module. They not only see the ship
disappear, but they also receive measurements from the module’s accelerometers,
confirming that the gravitational disturbance actually occurred and that the
system worked properly.”

“By the way,” she reinforced,
“when the ship goes through the wormhole, the people inside it can’t even tell.
It’s not like in the movies; there’s no beam-filled tunnel or anything like
that. It’s instantaneous. When the dark matter’s acceleration gets really close
to the activation, the light around the ship may seem distorted, but that’s it.
And it’s also really fast.”

“Everyone, our guest needs to go.
I know that we all still have lots of questions, but we will talk more about
this topic next class. That way, we can write out a list of our most relevant
questions to send to Dr. Scheffer, if she agrees,” said the professor in
closing, thanking Allison once more.

“Of course, teacher,” she
responded. “It would be my pleasure. And thank you for the invitation and for
letting me be here with you all. I hope I can return once I’m back from the
mission to tell you how it went” she said, to which the room responded with
applause.

A few hours later, Allison was
flying over the Amazon rainforest on her evening flight out of São Paulo. She
couldn’t see a thing when she looked down, but she knew that the largest
tropical forest in the world was down there, possibly as unknown as our
universe. Looking up, she could only see a few stars. It was clear to her that
the unknown surrounded and accompanied human existence in a number of ways. She
didn’t know exactly what she would find, and she wasn’t sure if she would
return. But she was happy to have the opportunity to contribute to the
advancement of human knowledge.

She suddenly felt a deep sense of
harmony come over her. At that moment, the astronomer and future astronaut was
completely and fully at peace.