Pulsar

by Ethan Stand

“I can ride if we are late, and the top is too tight.”

  “Rubbish. The helmet will ruin your hair, and I’m not going to comment on the shirt except to say it lets people know you are actually a girl. Hurry up and come inside. Mum, Aunty Aisha and Halimah want to help. Did you bring your new glasses?”

  Zen rolled her eyes and nodded as she hurried inside. Sahara was one of six children, and their family was part of a large extended Syrian community with dozens of aunties and uncles. Zen knew that her parents’ cultures had the same opportunities, but they’d been too self-sufficient and too driven to make the connections. Despite Sahara’s concerns, they were both standing at the bus stop near Sahara’s house in time to catch the correct bus.

  Several other students in their year were on the bus, and they were stunned when they recognised the slim, athletic-looking, and beautiful girl with Sahara as Zen, the outcast. Zen and Sahara ignored the looks and comments. Zen, because she was oscillating rapidly between acute embarrassment and intense anger, Sahara because she knew all it needed was a single spark and the new Zen would be ash and a dim memory in less than a second.

  It was a struggle, but Zen kept her promises to Sahara. They were in different form classes for the first period of the day. Instead of sitting in the back, as she’d always done whenever she had the option since first grade, Zen sat towards the front and near the middle of the room. When her name was called out, instead of grunting as she usually did, she said, “Present, Mrs Clark. I prefer being called Zen if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Mrs Clark, who’d had Zen in her classes on several occasions, stopped and stared for a few seconds before recovering and saying, “Of course, I should have known that, sorry, Zen.”

  After taking the roll, Mrs Clark, who had been dreading a year with Zen in the form class, and was still hesitant, said, “Welcome back. This is a big year, and in some ways, it is even more important for your future possibilities than Year 12. It sets the foundation on which many people will judge you, particularly when it comes to academics. Many of you have been here since Grade 7, and you know each other, or you think you do. Still, I’d like to go around and have you tell the class something you did during the holidays and then something that you plan on doing differently this year. Andrew Crown, you are first up.”

  Zen was the fifth student, and Mrs Clark took a deep breath before saying, “Zen, how about you?”

  Now to be fair to Mrs Clark, her deep breath was warranted. Zen’s usual responses to questions like this amounted too little more than “Nothing. I expect it is the same old boring school,” or something of a similar dismissive or argumentative nature.

  Mrs Clark had to bite her lip to stop her mouth opening, when Zen said, “One of my favourite memories of the holidays was free-climbing with my mother when we visited friends of hers in Chile. We were there over Christmas. This year I want to do school better. I’m hoping to get through at least the first month without being suspended. I’d like to say for the whole year but let’s face it, I need to be realistic.”

  Mrs Clark wasn’t able to stop herself laughing at Zen’s last comment. Then, she almost snorted when she realised Zen had been joking, something she’d doubted Zen was capable of. By lunch, Zen was the main topic of conversation in both the Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences staffrooms. Not only had she participated in her ‘Introduction to Calculus’ lesson, but she’d obviously already known the material at least as well as the teacher. In Physics she’d gotten full-marks on the pretest and when questioned was fully conversant with Newton’s Laws and their application to particle dynamics. The conversation in the Social Sciences staffroom revolved around Mrs Clark, who taught Economics, and who was still in some shock.

  At lunch, Zen and Sahara sat under the main covered area and once again, Zen was the main topic of conversation by all students, regardless of their grade. Many of these conversations were less flattering and usually would have seen Zen revert to violence or head to the library. Instead, she ignored the chatter and calmly talked with Sahara. The general conversation could be boiled down to five main topics. In order of frequency, they were: Zen is hot; I thought she was a lesbian; it’s all an act; she’s not that smart; and do you think she has a boyfriend? Regardless of the conversations, no one felt brave enough to join Sahara and Zen at their table.

  By the time school finished, Zen was emotionally worn out and also frustrated because of the time she’d missed while trying to stay focused on her classes. Sahara, on the other hand, was ecstatic at what she considered one of the most successful days ever. After recovering her bicycle, Zen rode home. The house was empty with both BB and Ed still at work and Hal at the university’s daycare. After a hurried snack, Zen rushed to her room to keep investigating before she went to her Capoeira session.

  The first thing she looked at when she entered her room was the clocks. Her pulsar clock had gained a further three attoseconds during the day. She turned to one of her monitors which she’d set up to plot the frequency, and even a rough look showed the period of rotation continuing to decrease. The first thing Zen did was check for additional comments that may have been added during the day, but she only found a couple of private messages and suggestions from her parents, both of whom had looked at the data several times throughout the day. All three had an unwritten agreement that while they might discuss work with each other, it was understood to be private. Zen knew her parents would only discuss the data with others after getting her permission. She spent three hours looking back over the data of the last two years, then after checking her investments, booked an additional two hours of sky-time for later that week before getting ready for her class.

  Things continued in much the same vein during the next two months, with the only real differences being that her parents lost interest in her pulsar after a few days, her social network at school began to enlarge and her investment portfolio plateaued with the increased time she spent in sky-time. Zen wasn’t thrilled with any of these things necessarily, but she realised there wasn’t much she could do about them. Her parents had their own research interests, and while the ever-decreasing period was an enigma, they’d decided to let Zen work on that by herself. The additional friends had made school more bearable for Sahara, who felt vindicated for getting Zen to make the changes. As for the investments, they’d always been there to give Zen the ability to do what she wanted, and what she wanted was to understand what was happening.

  After the first two weeks, Zen had stopped her daily updates to her parents and changed the classification of PSR J1525+5858 to ‘unstable, under investigation’. This did two things. First, because she was the first to identify the pulsar and therefore the designated ‘lead astronomer’ connected to it, all changes came directly to her and didn’t automatically get sent to other researchers unless they specifically requested updates. Secondly, it notified her of any requests for data from other agencies. So far, except for the initial queries from her parents, it looked like no one was interested in the ever-increasing period of rotation of a minor pulsar that was not associated with a well-known research facility.

  Two and a half months after the pulsar started changing, Zen was expecting the centrifugal forces would soon be so great that they would rip the neutron star apart, if that is what it was, and she’d begun to have some serious doubts. If it did explode, she expected the radiation ejected would be universally noticed, but this didn’t happen. Instead, the period shrunk rapidly over a sixty-minute period. Then, after a brief nanosecond interval of constant radiation, the pulsar disappeared. Two weeks later, after a second nanosecond of continuous radiation, the pulsar suddenly reappeared.

  3

  Zen and her parents had discussed the disappearing pulsar several times over those two weeks it was gone. Still, Zen was the only one with the time to put serious effort into trying to understand what happened. She realised this was probably because she had yet to change the classification. Zen set up an alarm to notify her if it reappeared. Fort
unately for her, the alarm went off in the middle of the night instead of during school time. She had to pay a premium to purchase some immediate sky-time, but there were always some researchers prepared to trade for the extra funds.

  After three hours of continuous sky-time, Zen had recorded enough data to occupy several weeks, but already she’d reached some conclusions. When the pulsar reappeared, she hadn’t immediately woken her parents, but they knew something momentous had happened because when they awoke at six, Zen was already making waffles and was on her second cup of coffee. BB and Ed looked at each other, then BB said, “Good morning, Zhenyi. Did something happen?”

  Zen smiled, then frowned, then said, “Yeah. I had a breakthrough with J1525. It’s kind of weird actually.”

  Ed had been reaching for the coffee but stopped with his hand out and said, “What? What do you mean a breakthrough?”

  “Just that. Something came together in my brain just after midnight. I think I know what is happening. More specifically, I have a hypothesis that I need to test.”

  Ed finished getting his coffee, then said, “Great, a hypothesis. Us scientists live for hypotheses. What is it?”

  “Yeah. I have one, but it is way out there. I’m too embarrassed to even share it at the moment.”

  BB smiled and said, “We all have those but don’t dismiss it completely until something better comes along, or something happens to show it’s wrong. I have three or four that will never see the light of day with the data I have now.”

  “Well, I’ve actually been thinking something since it disappeared and there is some data that might help, but I would need your help, Mum, to get it. I don’t have access to the LIGO data.”

  Ed’s eyes looked perplexed, and he said, “LIGO? I’m pretty sure it’s still shut down. I think the old data is still publicly available, though.”

  BB’s face, on the other hand, went blank. Zen had been watching for her reaction and raised her eyebrows before pointing her chin at her mother so Ed would see the response for himself. When Ed saw BB’s blank look, he said, “What’s that look for? I thought LIGO was offline. It’s been having stability issues for years, and it finally became too erratic. BB, is it still out of action?”

  BB shook her head and said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted to that, but there is stuff about LIGO I can’t discuss. I’ve been doing some consultancy work, and I have a pretty strong NDA. Zhenyi, Dad is right, LIGO is being re-tuned at the moment. I’ll see if I can get access to the old data for you when I get to work. Let me know what periods you want the data for. I’ll go get Hal up. When will the waffles be ready?”

  Without saying anything, Zen opened the waffle iron and emptied the cooked ones onto a plate. After adding more mixture, she turned back and said, “Two more lots will finish it, so maybe five minutes.”

  As BB left Ed looked said, “An NDA, that’s weird. LIGO is hardly world-shattering science. What do you think that’s about?”

  Zen just smiled and said, “Don’t forget, Mum’s the expert when it comes to dark matter and gravitational waves. She’s been spaced out more than normal the last three months with LIGO becoming so unstable and affecting her long term research project. The last two weeks though, she’d hardly been here at all, and I’m pretty sure from the reaction it’s because of LIGO. I doubt it is actually offline. Instead, I think it suddenly started working properly again a few weeks ago, and she isn’t allowed to talk about it yet. My hypothesis is that it will have stopped working again as of last night at approximately twelve-twenty-three-and-five-point-four-six-one seconds Eastern Standard Time. I think Mum’s reaction gave me the confirmation I wanted, even if she doesn’t know it yet.”

  “So, what is it? What’s the hypothesis?”

  “Not now. Mum needs to decide if she wants to hear it or not. NDAs and all.”

  Ed looked up but said nothing until BB returned with Hal. In fact, no one referred to the previous conversation at all until Ed and BB were stopped at the traffic lights near the university. They were side by side in the bike lane. Ed was turning left to take Hal to daycare, and BB was going straight ahead to get ready for her first lecture. Ed said, “BB, I understand NDAs so I won’t ask or say anything. However, if something did happen last night at approximately twelve-twenty-three and if you want to know more about it, then talk with Zen.”

  Ed had timed it just right, and as BB turned to look at him, the light went green. He pedalled away, leaving BB dumbfounded at the lights. Several bikes behind her started complaining that she wasn’t moving, but instead of starting to pedal, she pulled her bike to the curb and waved them on. BB hadn’t considered that Zen’s comments had anything to do with her current work with LIGO, but if they did, then she had a conundrum to solve.

  She could use the public data to isolate information on the pulsar, but that would take months without the algorithms Zen had set up. To use that to come up with her own hypothesis was possible, but the data from all of Zen’s sky-time belonged to Zen. Getting permission to access that would need Zen’s permission. She didn’t doubt the authorities could find a way to steal it if she even hinted that Zen knew something. Although her consultancy had a strong NDA, it was mainly corporate. However, she knew the FBI and others were investigating the possibility of espionage.

  Getting back on her bike, she turned left and waited for Ed until he left the daycare. He wasn’t all that surprised to see her. She said, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t betray her trust, but without even knowing her hypothesis, if there is a connection, the theoretical implications are huge for our understanding of gravity.”

  “Can you talk with anyone?”

  “No. If I do, it will be taken out of our hands by people I don’t trust to give her credit. What did she say?”

  “LIGO started working again a few weeks ago but stopped again this morning. She gave me a fairly precise time when the problems developed.”

  “Her pulsar.”

  “Almost certainly. I imagine she’s connecting it to some gravitational waves, but that’s crazy. I can’t believe they’d be detected this far away from the pulsar without us observing something more substantial on the macro scale than the weak radio waves she’s observed. They would have visibly affected the closer stars, and we would have observed that.”

  “We need to look at her data before I can work out what to do, and who to tell.”

  “No, we need to ask if we can look at her data. What she said is under our family NDA.”

  “She’ll want some quid pro quo. You know that’s what she wanted this morning. It was like ‘Hey Mum, you get me LIGO data and I’ll share my hypothesis.’ This consultancy is good money and good for networking.”

  “BB, I don’t think that was what she meant. I know this sounds weird, but I think she was nervous, almost scared. I think she wanted to validate her hypothesis before telling us because she’s frightened by its implications. Implications larger than just the LIGO. When you went blank she got the validation and she shut down.”

  “Ed, I can’t share the data from the last three years without giving a good reason. Look at it, sure. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times. Share it? I can’t even validate Zen’s hypothesis without breaking the NDA. Even talking here, now, speaking this obliquely with you is a grey area.”

  “So what will you do?”

  BB shook her head, and they just stood holding their bikes for a few minutes, then Ed said, “Let’s think on it through the day and talk with Zen tonight. She may help clarify things. I know you want what she has for your work, but we can’t break her trust.”

  In the end, BB agreed but struggled not to say anything when she received information later that day that the LIGO had stopped working again, and no one had any idea why. Instead of working till five like she usually did BB pulled Hal from daycare early and headed home straight after her last lecture. It was a Wednesday and Zen usually arrived home straight after school so she could finish any work before going to the boxing gym.
Zen was surprised to see her mother home but didn’t do more than yell out “hello” before heading up to her room. BB gave her time to get changed, then headed up and knocked on her door.

  “Come in.”

  BB walked in and wasn’t too surprised to see Zen already reviewing lines of data on her computer. What did surprise her was that Zen also had the news on in the background. BB said, “Can we talk?”

  “Sure, Mum, about LIGO?”

  “No. You already worked out I can’t discuss that. Look, I’ve been in a quandary all day. I want permission to share what you said to dad this morning. Will you let me do that? If it explains what is happening, then it will help hundreds with their research.”

  Zen sighed and said, “Sorry, I can’t. Well, not unless you can tell me who they are and what they’ll do with it.”

  “I’ll give you all the credit and make sure they contact you for data and relevant information. Just think of the implications. If we can make strides in understanding gravity, then just think what we could achieve.”

  “Mum, it isn’t about recognition. It’s about safety—mine, ours, everybody’s. My hypothesis explains what I think is happening at LIGO, but it is much, much bigger than that.”

  “Sweetheart, you are sixteen. I know you think things happen quickly, but even if your hypothesis is right, it will be decades before the community will make practical use of it. There will be time to get safeguards in place.”

  Zen just shook her head and said, “Mum, if I am right we don’t have decades, we have at most a couple of years and probably not that. I want to tell you, but only if you promise you won’t say anything.”

  BB nodded her head slowly then said, “You know I won’t say anything, Zhenyi. We never speak of what happens in family, you know that. It just makes it awkward for me, that is all. I’ll have data that I have to keep from the scientific community, and I hate doing that.”

  “Aren’t you already doing that?”