Sunfall

by Jim Al-Khalili

  ‘Oh, sweet Lord. Those poor souls,’ cried Grace.

  An almost forgotten memory from Camila’s childhood rose unbidden, of a summer’s day on the beach with her two sisters when they had built an elaborate sand castle. After hours of painstaking work, sculpting turrets, battlements, walls and moat, they had then watched as the tide came in, quickly washing away their creation until the sand was flat and featureless once more.

  As the wall of water continued across the lagoon towards them, looming ever larger, she instinctively reached across and grabbed hold of Grace’s hand. Their apartment window was thankfully higher than the top of the wave, so they were able to watch from their prime location as it slammed into their building, causing it to shudder. She heard screams from downstairs followed by what sounded like several explosions. Maybe those newly reinforced windows weren’t a match for a million-ton tsunami.

  The wave had reached as high as the floor below them when it hit but had now subsided so that only the first two floors of the building were underwater. The realization that her trip upstairs had most likely saved her life left Camila shaken. How many hundreds of lives were, at this very moment, coming to an end, trapped in their homes underneath the water? She looked across at her friend. Tears were running down Grace’s cheeks as she let out an anguished whimpering sound.

  Camila felt too numb to speak. She still hadn’t moved when, less than a minute later, the next, even larger surge hit land. This time, the wave seemed to have one purpose only. Reluctant to give up its immense store of energy until the final moment, it came for Camila.

  11

  Saturday, 9 February – New York

  Sarah had spent the hour since waking up in her hotel room following the awful news of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Jerome. The casualty count already stood at well over thirty thousand, and would no doubt rise further. Now, two days after it had reached maximum strength, it had been downscaled to a category four, but was still strong enough to pose a threat to life. It had switched direction and was moving north, still out at sea, which meant it would miss the US eastern seaboard. Sarah had been brooding over whether its extraordinary strength was indeed correlated with the weakened magnetic field, as many commentators were now claiming.

  She showered, dressed and headed down to meet Gabriel Aguda. She found him sitting on a sofa in the hotel lobby. He smiled and stood up to greet her. He was a giant of a man, in his mid-sixties, and clearly carrying more weight than even his almost two-metre-tall frame justified. What also struck her was the garishly coloured cotton shirt he was wearing under a faded brown corduroy jacket. He might move in high-powered political circles, but he nevertheless maintained a typical academic dress sense.

  ‘Dr Maitlin … Sarah, if I may, it’s good to meet you at last.’ He extended an enormous hand.

  Sarah shook it. There was something else about him that didn’t fit the mental image she’d formed from his profile and the photos she’d found online. But she couldn’t put her finger on it. ‘Well, it’s kind of you to come and meet me like this, but I wasn’t sure—’

  ‘I hope you haven’t had breakfast,’ Aguda interrupted. ‘There’s a nice pancake place just across the road. And we have a lot to discuss before this morning’s meeting. And do please call me Gabriel.’

  They stepped outside.

  The cold air stung her face and she yanked her woolly hat from a coat pocket, quickly pulling it over her head. All around her were signs that the normally stoical New Yorkers were nervous and preoccupied. Most of the people she passed wore the familiar glazed look of attention being focused on retinal displays, presumably following reports on Hurricane Jerome and its progress. Her own attention was snapped rudely back by Aguda’s booming voice alongside her. And she wasn’t the only one, as several passing pedestrians were startled out of their reverie and gave him a wide berth.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind if we start talking shop right away …’ he said, as he stepped off the kerb and strode across the busy street without a moment’s hesitation. He appeared oblivious to the dozen or more driverless cabs that had to brake suddenly, jolting their passengers. Sarah rushed to keep up with him. ‘It’s just that you and I are the only two scientists on the committee, and there are certainly others on there who don’t quite appreciate the magnitude of the danger our planet is facing.’

  On the other side of the road, she quickened her pace to draw level with the giant Nigerian. ‘These people are politicians, Sarah,’ he continued. ‘They only listen to us when they think they have to, and they cherry-pick evidence if it suits their purposes and ambitions.’

  Where was he going with this? Was he about to reveal something important to her? Was there some conflict of interest on the committee such that he needed friends?

  Aguda seemed unconcerned that anyone else might overhear him as he continued in his loud, deep voice. ‘At the moment, governments are in panic mode,’ he thundered. ‘Despite the months of warnings that something like the Air India incident was bound to happen it’s only now that they’re taking it seriously; of course, you and I know the situation is only going to get worse. We’ve seen the destruction that Hurricane Jerome has caused. You know as well as I do that these events are connected.’

  Sarah made a mental note to get him to explain this connection further. But a more immediate question popped into her head.

  ‘OK, so if governments are now finally listening to the scientists and putting contingency plans into place, why is this committee necessary at all?’

  Aguda gave her an indulgent smile. ‘You have a lot to learn, Sarah. It’s not so much having contingency plans, but rather who chooses which ones to put in place, and then who pays for them. Oh, and even more crucially of course, who pays to replace all the communication satellites that get damaged in any future event like the recent CME. We have to have a solid international consensus. As for us, well, I guess you and I are there to give the committee scientific legitimacy.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to think we still have a vital role to play. But the fact is, Sarah, while the UN is pretty toothless, and not exactly untouched by corruption, it is still the only organization that can claim to stand up to China. And if we – you and I, that is – don’t press home the seriousness of the current threat facing the world, then China will just act in its own interests, as it always does.’ He gave a rueful grunt.

  They had reached a busy intersection and Sarah lost Aguda for a few seconds as they fought their way through a crowd waiting at a crossing. She hoped this breakfast was worth all the effort and wondered whether it wouldn’t have been more sensible just to grab a snack at the hotel before heading to the meeting. She drew up alongside him again.

  None of what he’d said so far was news. Sarah knew full well that the UN had struggled for many years to ensure that its voice was heard on the world stage. But she had detected an urgency in Aguda’s voice that hinted at something more – something he wasn’t telling her. It felt as though he was rather too keen to win her over to his side. But if so, what or who were the opposition? Before she could quiz him further, they arrived at the diner.

  The place was packed, but the warmth provided a welcome respite from the sharp cold outside. The smell of coffee and baked pastries pervading the air was enticing, and the general hubbub of conversation was so loud that Sarah almost had to shout to be heard.

  ‘OK, so my next question is: why me? Why would a committee as high-powered as you say it is recruit someone like me, with no experience of dealing with politicians, and all just because I made it onto some news networks?’ She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to hear. ‘I hope they’re not just looking for someone to be the scientific spokesperson for the committee, wheeled out to face the media every time there’s a crisis.’ She had no intention of acting as a mouthpiece for governments wishing to tell the world that everything would be fine.

  Aguda’s guffaw coincided with a lull in the buzz of the diner, startling a passing wai
tress, who dropped the handful of cutlery she’d been carrying. Sarah watched as two bots glided over and helped the girl pick it up.

  Aguda didn’t seem to have even noticed and simply carried on where he’d left off. ‘On the contrary, my dear, your credentials as a researcher have been thoroughly vetted and, believe me, you come with the very highest recommendations.’

  Sarah bit her lip and let his patronizing tone pass. Aguda had clearly mistaken her misgivings for insecurity. She certainly didn’t need his approbation.

  He continued, ‘We needed someone to tell us, not only just how bad things are likely to get in the coming months, but how reliably and how far in advance we can predict these sorts of geomagnetic storms. Of course, just as importantly, we did indeed want someone without the baggage of vested interest or political ambitions.’

  Aguda’s lecture – because that was what it was beginning to feel like to her – was interrupted by one of the bots that had been helping the waitress. Gliding up to them, it informed them in its singsong voice that a table was now available. Sarah noted absent-mindedly that it was a model popular these days, both in homes and in the service industry, mainly for its versatility. It didn’t have the processing ability and machine-learning skills of the new companion bots, which were able to react to human emotions almost as well as dogs, but then there really wasn’t much call for empathy in a New York diner. In fact, dispassionate and efficient service was ideal.

  She followed Aguda and the bot to a corner table near the back of the diner. After a moment checking the menu screen, they each tapped out their orders of coffee and pancakes. Sarah checked the time on her retinal clock; they had less than an hour before they had to report at the UN building across town.

  Luckily, Gabriel also appeared mindful of their limited time and his demeanour suddenly became more serious. He leaned forward across the table towards her. ‘OK, Sarah, how much do you know about geomagnetism?’ His breath smelled of peppermint and stale cigars.

  Was this going to be an interview, or was he just gauging her level of knowledge before he continued his lecture? ‘Well, I’m a solar physicist – my expertise is in the magnetic field of the Sun, not the Earth. So, if you’re asking me how much I know about the weakening strength of the magnetosphere and the approaching Flip then, no, it’s not really my area.’

  ‘Good, because it is my area.’ Gabriel smiled. ‘Please stop me if I’m telling you anything that’s too basic, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ Sarah nodded. The shoe was on the other foot for a change, she thought wryly to herself – she’d spent the past few days saying the same thing to journalists and politicians.

  ‘Well, as I’m sure you know,’ began Aguda, ‘the location of the Earth’s magnetic north has been on the move for the past few centuries, but in recent years it’s been speeding up. It used to be in North America; now it’s in Asia.’ Sarah was shocked by this revelation, and equally by the fact that she hadn’t known about it before. She was aware the pole had been shifting, but she clearly hadn’t been keeping up to date.

  ‘That in itself, of course, is not the issue,’ continued Aguda. ‘Unlike the Sun’s magnetic polarity, which reverses every decade or so, the Earth’s magnetic field only flips over a few times in a million years, but each geomagnetic reversal takes thousands of years to complete. And in any case, the next one is now long overdue – by about half a million years, in fact.

  ‘But a long-standing problem is that we don’t fully understand what triggers such a reversal. I mean, we know that the Earth’s molten core is disrupted in some way, but—’

  ‘—But what’s happening now isn’t one of those slow reversals, right?’

  ‘No, the speed at which the field is changing suggests a quite different mechanism. And it’s one that we geologists have seen before, in the relatively recent geological history.’

  Gabriel paused theatrically just as their coffee and pancakes arrived and he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘Have you ever come across something called the Laschamp excursion?’

  ‘Can’t say that I have, no,’ she replied, unwrapping her knife and fork from their napkin and immediately tucking in to her breakfast. ‘Tell me.’

  Gabriel grew animated, his own pancakes forgotten. ‘Well, in the 1960s, geologists found strong evidence in the ancient lava near the village of Laschamp in central France showing that there’d been a temporary, and geologically very brief, reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field. This happened about forty thousand years ago. In fact, the magnetic poles switched over for such a short time before flipping back again that we call it an “excursion”, rather than a “reversal”.’

  Again, Sarah was surprised she hadn’t come across this information before. The scientist in her was intrigued and she looked up from her plate, fork with skewered piece of pancake frozen halfway to her mouth. ‘Forty thousand years ago; that would put it during the last ice age, right?’

  ‘Correct. And guess what else is of significance forty thousand years ago.’

  Sarah took an educated guess. ‘Um, isn’t that round about the time that modern humans arrived in Europe?’

  ‘Yes, that’s partly correct.’ Aguda was clearly getting into his stride now, his own pancakes still untouched. ‘Homo sapiens migrated to Europe from both Africa and Asia in several waves, many tens of thousands of years ago. But forty thousand years ago was also when Neanderthals disappeared from Europe.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Isn’t that the same thing? Didn’t Homo sapiens replace Neanderthals in Europe? And where they overlapped, they even interbred, but Neanderthals gradually became extinct because they couldn’t compete …’ Sarah recalled a lecture by a highly regarded palaeontologist in which he’d argued that Neanderthals hadn’t gone extinct at all but were simply lost in the noise as they interbred with the much larger Homo sapien numbers.

  Aguda smiled. ‘Your knowledge of palaeontology isn’t bad for a physicist.’ Not for the first time, Sarah wondered where this was all going. She checked the time. They would need to be on their way soon if they were to make the start of the meeting, and she still wasn’t sure what point Gabriel was trying to make. But the geologist continued with his lecture.

  ‘Certainly, there were pockets of Neanderthals hanging around southern Europe for another ten thousand years, but the majority disappeared rather suddenly – we think this is because of some cataclysmic event. And most geologists now believe it was the Laschamp excursion.’

  Sarah felt a growing sense of foreboding as the implications of what she was hearing began to sink in. ‘Hang on – you’re saying that what’s happening with the Earth’s magnetic field now is like an event that happened forty thousand years ago – and that it was so awful it caused the near extinction of an entire species of humans? Fuck! And this was all down to a weakening of the magnetic field?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am saying. The geological data suggest that during those few hundred years that the field was temporarily reversed it had just one tenth of its normal strength.’

  ‘So, considerably weaker than now.’

  Aguda nodded. ‘But that’s not even the most interesting thing. During the few months of actual transition, while the field was doing the flipping, it disappeared almost entirely. So, you can imagine what that would have meant. The potential disintegration of the ozone layer in the atmosphere leading to lethal levels of radiation streaming in from space as well as a serious and very sudden disruption of the Earth’s climate.’

  Sarah had by now lost her appetite. She thought about Hurricane Jerome, a thousand kilometres out to sea from where she was sitting, with a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the diner seemed a lot quieter now – perhaps her senses were just blocking out the surrounding sights and sounds as she focused on processing all the new information. She turned back to Aguda. ‘I guess it makes sense that the reason Jerome was so powerful may be because the high cosmic ray flux is p
laying havoc with atmospheric conditions …’

  Aguda finished her train of logic. ‘… And the reason that radiation is so high? Because the weakened magnetic field can’t block it. So, the energy of the cosmic rays that are already getting through the atmosphere is being absorbed to transform hurricanes into deadly superhurricanes.’

  Sarah had spent the past two weeks concerned about geomagnetic storms wiping out telecommunication systems. But this was all far more terrifying.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to clear her head, her half-eaten plate of pancakes forgotten. She needed to remain rational. And, yes, maybe this was all getting a little far-fetched. ‘But this Laschamp event … you’re talking about climatic conditions that brought about the end of an entire species … and if they were that severe why didn’t they cause a mass extinction of lots of other life on Earth at the same time?’

  ‘You have to remember that the climate in northern Europe during the ice age was already harsh enough. So, any further disruption would have tipped the balance from unforgiving to intolerable as far as the Neanderthals and many other animals and plants were concerned.’

  ‘Okaay … I’ll buy that,’ she said, still not entirely persuaded. ‘But why would it be the Neanderthals who were affected and not Homo sapiens? I thought the Neanderthals were a hardy species.’

  Aguda leaned back in his chair and spoke through a mouthful of pancake – the end of the world seemingly not affecting his appetite. ‘It’s simple geography, Sarah. The further north you go, the harsher the climate and the narrower the margin for comfort if things get worse. So, southern Europe and Africa, where most modern humans had settled, didn’t fare so badly. Also, Neanderthals tended to be fair-skinned and redheaded, which suggests that, in the almost complete absence of an ozone layer, they would have been especially susceptible to ultraviolet B damage.’