by Russell Fine
The immediate problem was how to create a wormhole in the first place, and then how to create a termination point at a remote location. It took thirty people working full time for five years before they were able to create a wormhole between two known locations. The wormhole was fifty feet long and it appeared to be stable. It had a diameter of two feet. A ball was thrown into one end of the wormhole and they were expecting it to appear at the other end. Instead, it disappeared completely. When the power was turned off the wormhole collapsed, but the ball was gone.
The engineers looked at the design, came up with a few ideas, and a month later they were ready to try again. They created the wormhole as before, gave it a few minutes to stabilize, and threw a ball into one end. This time the ball came out the other end of the wormhole, but it was shredded into thousands of little pieces. Nevertheless, they had made progress.
It took three more years of experimenting with the device before there was a successful test. They tried other objects and they all went through the wormhole unharmed. Up to this point, no living object had been put through the wormhole, but they decided to try sending a mouse through it. A small white lab mouse was placed in a clear plastic container and pushed into the device. It came out the other side, but it was dead. It didn’t appear to be physically harmed, so they would have to examine it to find out what had killed it. The distance was so short it was impossible to tell how much time had elapsed, if any, for the objects put into the wormhole to travel fifty feet.
Now they had two problems: they had to know what killed the mouse, and they had to build a longer wormhole so they could measure the elapsed time. However, determining how the mouse was killed was more important. The tests on the mouse didn’t immediately reveal any cause of death. They dissected it and looked at every part of it, but everything appeared to be normal. Then they decided to look at the cell structure to see if there was any cell damage. They discovered there was substantial damage to the brain cells. The engineers remembered how the rubber ball they had put into the device when it was first tested came out shredded. They thought the same type of adjustments could be made, but to a much greater degree, and that might resolve the problem.
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It took a few weeks to make the changes and they tried again. The results were the same. The mouse died. They looked at the changes they had made, they tweaked a few things, and then they killed another mouse.
One of the engineers suggested that there might be some sort of radiation exposure inside the wormhole and perhaps if they shielded the mouse from any potential radiation it would resolve the problem. They built a steel box and lined it with lead, put the mouse into the device, and then retrieved it from the other side. They opened the box and fully expected to find another dead mouse, but the mouse was alive and appeared to be okay. The biologists assigned to the project put it into a cage and watched it for five days, but it didn’t exhibit any problems. Five days later the mouse was killed and examined for cellular damage, but none was found.
Now the engineers knew there was some kind of intense radiation inside the wormhole, but they didn’t have any idea what kind of radiation it was. All attempts to check the radiation levels with sensors failed. They suspected the passage through the wormhole was too fast for the sensors to react. They were going to have to wait until a longer wormhole was ready.
It was decided a mile-long device would give them enough distance to determine the speed of the objects passing through it. Some thought was given to building a mile-long structure to test it but ultimately, because it had to work in any environment, they decided to build it outside. It took four months to build. When it was ready, sensors were placed at both ends of the wormhole. They were connected to a computer that could accurately determine when an object entered the wormhole and when it arrived at the other end. The device was accurate to ten-millionths of a second.
They decided to test it with a rubber ball again. The ball was thrown into the device and it instantly appeared at the other end. The computer indicated zero time had elapsed, which meant less than one ten-millionth of a second had elapsed between the ball’s entry into the wormhole and its exit. Then they tested it with another mouse, and it went through the system in its shielded container without any problems.
They also put radiation sensors through the wormhole, but again there was no indication of any radiation found. So, either the sensors were not fast enough to detect the radiation or the radiation was something the sensors were not designed to detect. Either way, the team had no idea how to figure out what the radiation was.
Another milestone in the development of the wormhole system had been reached, but there were still many problems ahead. Being able to move an object a mile is not the same as being able to move it a few trillion miles. Additionally, the most perplexing part of the problem was how to create a termination point for the wormhole from the entry point location. That was the next issue the engineers decided to work on.
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The engineers at NASA spent months proposing various ideas for ways to create the wormhole termination point remotely. They tried a few ideas and all of them failed, but that did not deter them. There was a consensus that a solution existed, but nobody had thought of it yet. Finally, a year later, an engineer named Dr. Carlos Ramirez came up with a possible solution. It involved projecting a high energy particle beam that could be used to control the direction of the wormhole, and when the beam was shut off the wormhole would collapse. The design was similar to particle beam weapons that had been invented back in the 2030’s, but this one would be much more powerful. They ran computer simulations and it looked like it would work. Construction of the device commenced, and ten months later, it was ready for testing. The way it worked was the particle beam was started first, and then the wormhole was created around it. It was a line of sight system because any dense object would collapse the particle beam.
The first test involved creating a wormhole on a flat area near a mountain with sheer cliff wall two miles away. The particle beam was turned on and then the wormhole was created. It was difficult to see because it only created a slight distortion in the air, as can be seen above a hot object. Cameras were set up at the entry and exit points of the wormhole so they would be able to see the results instantly. It was tested with a rubber ball again. Dr. Ramirez threw the ball into the wormhole and it instantly flew out of the wormhole and hit him in the chest. He wasn’t hurt, but extremely surprised. Analysis of the video showed the ball striking the wall and bouncing back into the wormhole.
The test was an amazing success, but now they had to figure out how far they could project the particle beam. It was decided that the test should be done either in space or from the surface of the moon because they were sure that projecting the beam through the atmosphere would weaken it, and it was, after all, designed to work in space. Two days later, Dr. Ramirez and two other engineers went to the moon with all of their equipment. The test was set up on the surface of the moon and the particle beam was aimed at a point on the Mojave Desert. When the beam was turned on it was instantly detected by engineers on Earth. That was a distance of more than two hundred and forty thousand miles. The results were better than they had hoped, but now they needed to test something farther away with no atmospheric interference.
For the next test, a ship was launched from the space station and moved to a location five hundred thousand miles from the moon. The particle beam was aimed at the ship, but when it was turned on it was not detected on the ship. It was a little disappointing, but not unexpected. The ship was moved in fifty thousand miles and another test was performed. The results were better; a very weak field was detected, but it may not have been strong enough to prevent the wormhole from collapsing. The ship was moved twenty-five thousand miles closer and the test was successful. The particle beam could be projected 2.28 light seconds into space.
The engineers realized they could create a wormhole 2.28 light seconds long. It was interesting but usel
ess from the point of traveling to other solar systems. The only practical application was to build a kind of elevator going from Earth to the moon. That would certainly be useful, but it wasn’t what they were trying to accomplish. The next part of the task was to figure out how to project the beam far enough to make it useful.
Over the next several months they conducted more tests, but the results were always similar. The beam dissipated at four hundred twenty-five thousand miles. A more powerful beam generator was built and when it was tested the results were only slightly improved. The beam was still usable at four hundred and thirty-four thousand miles, but obviously still not what they were looking for.
The NASA engineers were holding meetings every three days, but for the most part, the meetings were just excuses to talk, drink coffee, and eat snacks. But finally, at one of the meetings, Dr. Ramirez again thought he may have come up with a solution. “I think that our approach to resolving this problem has been wrong from the beginning. We’ve been trying to project the particle beam to the ship’s final destination, or at least far enough to make it useful. I believe what we have to do is project the beam from the ship as it’s moving through the wormhole. As long as the ship stays within the particle beam it will continuously move through the wormhole. I realize for that to happen the ship can’t travel instantly through the wormhole, and I’m certain it doesn’t. If it did, the mice that were killed during our early testing would not have had any time to be exposed to the radiation inside it, but obviously, they were. So, it must take some time to go through it. I would like to run another time test but this test should be at four hundred and twenty-five thousand miles. If there’s a measurable amount of elapsed time going through the wormhole, I’m sure we can resolve this problem.”
Everybody agreed that was a good idea. At least it gave them something to try. The test was arranged for two weeks later. They used the same system that was used to test the one-mile- long wormhole. After the test was completed, the computer indicated the time required for the object to pass through the wormhole was .017 seconds. So, it actually traveled one hundred and thirty-four times faster than light.
The next test was to use a mouse again. The shielded container holding the mouse was placed into the wormhole and retrieved by the crew in the target ship. When they opened the container, the mouse appeared to be in perfect condition. A check of the time for the mouse to pass through the wormhole was unchanged from the previous test. It was still .017 seconds.
When Dr. Ramirez saw the results of the test, he said to the other people at the moon base, “I think now we all know that the physical laws that apply in our universe do not apply inside a wormhole. I should have realized this when we put the first rubber ball into a wormhole. If the physical laws were the same it would have exited the wormhole at a much greater velocity than its entry speed. We also know objects are moved through the wormhole, not just instantly transported. That should’ve been apparent when the first mouse died. I think we can correctly assume objects are instantly accelerated to more than one hundred times the speed of light when they enter a wormhole and instantly decelerated to their entry speed when they exit the wormhole. So, if the laws of motion were applicable inside a wormhole, any object placed into it would have been subjected to unbelievable gravitational forces and would have been crushed. We also know some time elapses between the time an object enters a wormhole and the time it exits. I believe the .017 seconds it takes to transit the wormhole will be enough time to extend the wormhole another four hundred twenty-five thousand miles, so our ship should be able to move continuously. I suspect there’s no time dilation inside the wormhole, but it needs to be tested. Does anybody disagree?”
None of the other people at the base disagreed with Dr. Ramirez’s ideas. They could sense that their task which, at the start seemed to be insurmountable, was coming close to being completed. They had been working on this project for almost nine years and they were ahead of schedule. At the first meeting of the team working on the project in 2100, it had generally been thought it would take at least twenty years to complete.
They had to create a system capable of generating a particle beam directed at a specified position in space and allowing that location to change every .017 seconds. They also had to design a system that would create a wormhole large enough for a ship to travel through and small enough to be placed on the ship. Of the two tasks, the first one was far more difficult, and it took almost three years to create the first working model to test. The larger wormhole generator was ready eighteen months earlier. The devices had to be put on a ship to be tested.
The ship had to have a human pilot. It would have been impossible to control remotely because one second after the ship departed it would be twenty-five million miles from Earth and out of control range. Because of the speed of the ship, any control transmission sent to the ship would never reach it. This was a dangerous mission. While the ship was being built several human tests were performed, sending the subject on a four hundred and twenty-five-thousand-mile journey. There were no problems found. In fact, the people who were tested said they felt nothing. There was no sensation of movement at all. Of course, being sent four hundred and twenty-five thousand miles may not be the same as being sent a light year away. These tests were too short to determine if there were any time dilation effects, so that was something else that would be evaluated during the test.
This first test was going to be short. The ship would move out beyond the orbit of Pluto, turn around, and come back. The outbound part of the trip would take about fourteen seconds; on the return trip, it would stop somewhere between Mars and Earth. Then the ship would use its sub-light engine to return to the space station.
They wanted an experienced space pilot for the test mission, so they asked for volunteers. Of the fifty active space pilots, forty-seven volunteered. After going over all of the volunteers’ qualifications, Captain Jeffery Whitestone was selected.
Jeffery was born in England but emigrated to the North American Union at age eleven when his father accepted a teaching position at Harvard. He graduated high school at seventeen, and not surprisingly, went to Harvard where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and then a degree in electrical engineering. After obtaining his second degree, he went to work for NASA as a junior engineer. A year later he applied for a position as a pilot and was accepted into the two-year training program. He completed that in 2108 and had been making regular trips to Mars and Ganymede since that time.
One of the reasons Jeffery was selected for this mission was his engineering background. The general feeling was that somebody with his background would be better able to understand the systems on the test ship, and if there was a problem he would be more likely to find a solution.
There was a discussion about having two pilots on the test mission, but since the mission was so short and potentially dangerous, it was ultimately decided a single pilot would be best.
The test was scheduled for September 16, 2116. Jeffery had been training with the engineers who designed the propulsion system for six months. He felt more than ready when the time for the test had arrived. The plan was to move the ship one thousand miles from the space station, orient the ship so it was pointing to a star several light years away, program the controls system to go in the direction of the star, travel along that path for fourteen seconds, and then collapse the wormhole.
A shuttle pilot took Jeffery to the ship and stayed with him until he was comfortably seated in the pilot’s seat. Then the shuttle pilot left. Shortly after the shuttle pilot closed the hatch, Jeffery powered on the engine control systems. He moved the ship to the designated position and contacted the space station to tell them he was ready. They told him to launch the ship. He pressed the button to launch the ship while he was looking at a monitor that showed his designated flight path. He felt nothing, but the view in the monitor became fuzzy. When the ship stopped fourteen seconds later, the view instantly cleared up and what he saw was
much different than the view he had before he pushed the launch button. He checked his position with the computer and it confirmed that he was now more than three billion miles from Earth. The ship was equipped with external cameras and he spent several minutes taking video pictures from the ship. Then he turned the ship around and pointed it at the sun. He programmed the system to take him to position seventy thousand miles from Earth. When the computer was ready he pushed the launch button again, and several seconds later, when the view in the monitor cleared up, he could see something he had seen many times before from space: Earth. He contacted the space station to tell them the mission was successful and he would be back at the space station in less than two hours.
Fifteen minutes later Jeffery received a message from Max Hiller, his new boss: “Great job, but this is only the first step. We’ll discuss this when you get back to the station.” Max was in charge of product development for NASA, and that included the development of the ships that would be used for interstellar exploration. Jeffery thought this test flight was a onetime event and afterward, he would go back to flying his regular trips to Mars and Ganymede. Now it didn’t appear to be the case. He wondered what Max had planned for him.
The shuttle was waiting for him just outside the docking location. A few minutes after stopping, Jeffery heard the familiar sound of the shuttle docking with his ship. He took the shuttle for the ten-minute trip to the space station. When he got inside, there was a crowd waiting for him and they began to applaud. He really didn’t think he had done anything to rate the applause, but he appreciated it anyway. He saw Max standing in the crowd and when their eyes met, Max began to walk over to him. Max shook Jeffery’s hand and said, “Congratulations, you have now flown faster and farther than any other human.