Chapter 8
October 1, 2027
Washington, DC
The upshot of the president’s daily intelligence briefing that day was that the Russian bear was sharpening its claws. The available intelligence pointed strongly to a ramp up in Russian activity in Libya, arming and funding one of the local factions sharing a fragile balance of power in the fragmented North African country. It appeared to be a deliberate and early test of the new president’s degree of interest in the Mediterranean and Middle East, probably with the hope of making some inroads on the watch of an inexperienced, unelected president. Jim wasn’t the kind of leader to stand by and let that happen, unaware that he would soon have much bigger problems to deal with.
While his intelligence advisors packed up their briefing books, Jim spoke to his chief of staff, “Will, let’s have these folks run through the situation in Libya again in the next few days, bringing in the secretaries of state and defense. Once we have a response plan, I’ll want to communicate with my counterparts in the UK, continental Europe, and our allies in the Middle East.”
Will responded that he would get right on it. He stayed behind as the others filed into the Oval Office proper and then out. He had booked fifteen minutes for himself to go over the priorities of the next few days with the president.
At the end of their brief meeting, Will confirmed with President Rushton that he was comfortable with his itinerary. As Will prepared to depart, he said, “Mr. President, I know you are not keen to seek an elected term come next year. However, the senior leadership of the Democratic National Committee has asked to get some time on your calendar in the next while. From what I am hearing, they will ask you to consider running for the party’s nomination and they will support you if you will. Mr. President, that’s not an automatic conclusion on their part. It has been carefully thought out. Although you haven’t yet established your own distinct presidential image, you are strongly associated with our popular late president as an important part of his successful team. They have done a lot of sounding out and are convinced that you will have broad support within the party and would win the election.”
Jim sighed and replied, “Will, of course I will meet with the leadership and hear them out. You are correct though. I don’t plan to run the gauntlet of the primaries and then an election campaign. There’s lots of important work to be done that I will need to focus my attention on. I took on the vice presidency at the request of President Mahally, whom I greatly respected. But I’m not a politician, and as much as I liked and respected Tim Mahally, I don’t really want to ride the coattails of a sympathy vote to the leadership of this country. So, I will do the best I can at this job for the next year and a quarter but then leave it to someone who is better suited.”
Will wasn’t surprised at this response, and he didn’t capitulate, “Mr. President, you are right that the party is seeing this through a political lens and the sympathy vote is an important part of the calculation. But that’s not why I hope you’ll keep an open mind. I have watched you now for three years, as a campaigner, as a vice president and now as the president. You may not be a politician, but you are a leader, a very good leader, and that’s what this country needs while we continue to put the extremes of our past politics behind us. I was very close to Tim Mahally, so I know you didn’t join him just because he asked. You joined him because you believed in the centrist vision he espoused, and you still do. I know of no other person in the current political spectrum that is better able to carry that vision forward. Mr. President, you don’t have to say yes to the party. There are still several months for you to mull it over before you will need to make a commitment. But, please don’t say no just yet. Once you do, the momentum will begin to move in another direction and will be difficult to recapture. Please keep your options open for now.”
As Will stepped out Jim noticed that he was a few minutes behind for his next appointment, another session with Dr. Eli Wayman, his science advisor, who was then ushered into the study by the president’s personal secretary. “Hello again, Eli. What horrible problems are you going to educate me about today? Do you have anything up your sleeves to gain us friends and stability in North Africa?”
Eli chuckled, “Mr. President, it isn’t really the role of your science advisor to bring you horrible problems. Really, I should be bringing you solutions. So, no, I didn’t think we’d talk about problems today, though we can come back to global warming and geoengineering whenever you wish. Today I thought I’d run through with you the function of our Planetary Defense Coordination Office at the NASA headquarters here in DC. This is the agency through which you and I would be alerted to a risk of a significant asteroid strike on the Earth. Just to reassure you, none are currently expected, though one will come fairly close in 2029, and we will cover that.”
Eli continued, “Mr. President, I know you were partly jesting about North Africa, but do you think that large volumes of low-cost fresh water could help whatever situation you are dealing with there? Coincidentally, I have heard just this week from a colleague at MIT who is overseeing some very promising research into low-cost, large-scale desalination technology. It’s a little too soon to be sure, but it seems like they may have quite a breakthrough.”
Rushton responded, “Yes I was jesting, but now that you mention it, maybe fresh water could help. It sure couldn’t hurt. Tell me more about that when you think it is ready. Now, I am all ears to hear about the risk of asteroid strikes.”
“Mr. President, let’s begin with a refresher for you on what our solar system looks like, as we currently understand it, which is pretty well I think. It will help to look at a few images I’ve got here on my laptop.”
Eli angled his laptop toward the president so that he could see the screen clearly.
“This first one is just a simple illustrative depiction of the solar system with its four small solid inner planets and four outer gas giants. The size of the planets is shown pretty much to scale as they would appear if we were looking at a true image, and the planets all happened to be at a point in their orbits where they were all lined up in a row, which they never actually have been or will be. For example, Jupiter’s diameter is roughly twelve times that of the Earth, roughly as it appears here.
“The distances between the planets as shown in this illustration are not to scale, however. For example, Jupiter is more than three times further from the Sun than its next innermost neighbor, Mars; whereas here it looks like it’s only about twice as far out. More dramatically, Neptune, the outermost planet looks here to be only about twice as far out as Jupiter, but in reality it is way out in the cold, about six times further out. It is tricky to show the distances between the planets in an accurate linear scale because the range of distances is so great that to fit them all in one picture would squash the innermost planets together.
“There are a few other things that are worth noting here. First, the planets are all shown in one plane, like a row of marbles lying on a platter. Of course, space is three dimensional, unlike the surface of a platter, so in concept the planets could all orbit the Sun in a topsy-turvy array of different planes. In reality they do lie pretty much in a single flat plane with at most a few degrees difference between the inclinations of their orbits relative to Earth’s orbit. This plane is referred to as the plane of the ecliptic. This is obviously too ordered to be an accident given the infinite number of alternative possibilities and is the result of how the Sun and the solar system formed from a whirling contracting hot cloud of gas about 4.8 billion years ago. The planets all orbit in roughly the same plane as that original cloud of gas did.
“Another thing to take note of is our apparent observer position. This picture is drawn as if we were in a space ship lying slightly above the plane of the ecliptic, looking down toward the planets at an angle of maybe thirty degrees. Of course, even the terms ‘above’ and ‘below’ are arbitrary in space, but in our Eurocentric culture we are used to thinking of the top of the world
as being the north pole, which points at the star Polaris. So, we use the term ‘above’ in the space of the solar system to mean being on the same side of the plane of the ecliptic as is Polaris. Another common depiction would be where the observer position is directly above the plane of the ecliptic looking straight down from above the Sun. Another one is a sideways view as if our eyes are on the plane of the ecliptic. No one viewpoint is correct. It just depends on what we are trying to understand and conceptualize.
“The planets are all revolving about the Sun in their individual orbits. The direction of rotation is the same in every case, counterclockwise as viewed from ‘above.’ So, if this picture were animated, the planets would be swinging away from us. By the way, the Sun also spins on its own axis in a counterclockwise direction when viewed from ‘above,’ and all the planets except Venus and Uranus spin on their axes in the same counterclockwise direction. This common direction of revolution and rotation stems from the spin direction of the cloud of gas and dust from which the solar system originated, which then imparted the same spin to every solar body that was formed at that time. Venus, which has a very slow clockwise spin, and Uranus, with a more noticeable clockwise spin, were likely knocked off their original direction of spin by large collisions with other bodies.”
Jim was again taking notes in his small notebook. He said, “That’s all very interesting, and your illustration of our solar system is quite an eyeful. Please send me a copy of it.”
“I certainly will, Mr. President, and I’ll include the rest of the pictures that I am going to show you. Just delete any that you don’t want to keep. The last thing I want you to absorb from this illustration, though, is the two circular rings of rocks that are also orbiting the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic. The first, which is called the asteroid belt, lies between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, and the second, called the Kuiper belt, is way out beyond Neptune. These rings of rocks play a major role in the potential for an asteroid to impact the Earth. The illustration is a little misleading in that these chunks of rock are quite a bit more spread out than it appears, remembering that Jupiter is much further away from Mars than the scale of this illustration makes it seem, and likewise Neptune is much, much further from Jupiter than it looks here. There’s also not as much material relative to the size of the planets as the illustration suggests. The total mass of the asteroid belt is only about 4 percent of the mass of our moon. The mass of the Kuiper belt is quite a bit larger than the asteroid belt, perhaps as much as four or five times the mass of our moon, but still far less than that of the Earth. Nevertheless, there are a lot of rocks in these rings ranging in size from pinheads up to Ceres in the asteroid belt, which is about six hundred miles in diameter, and Pluto in the Kuiper belt at fifteen hundred miles in diameter.
“Actually, it is a misnomer to call the objects within the Kuiper belt rocks. Unlike those in the asteroid belt, which are mostly dense nuggets of carbon or silica or nickel and iron, the Kuiper belt objects, or KBOs, are largely frozen volatiles such as methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia and water. If and when one of these balls of ice from the Kuiper belt, or even beyond, gets close enough to the Sun to begin to vaporize, it forms a glowing tail and is referred to as a comet.
“There is lots of action in both belts, with objects colliding with each other as well as being pushed around by Jupiter and Uranus. As a result, objects are often ejected from these belts, sometimes inward, possibly to collide with a planet or the Sun, sometimes outward into the farther reaches of the solar system or out of the system completely. In fact, both of these belts were originally much more massive than at present, having lost most of their original mass in the 4.8 billion years since the origin of the solar system.
“Although there are several other potential sources of medium to large solar system objects that could strike the Earth, these two belts are the primary sources. In fact, nearly all of the many meteorites that have been discovered on or below the Earth’s surface appear to be from the asteroid belt. There have undoubtedly been collisions of comets into the Earth as well, though these appear to be much rarer and the heat from friction with the Earth’s atmosphere would melt and vaporize all but the largest of comets before it could impact the Earth’s surface. Much of the water on the Earth’s surface has likely come from impacts of comets in the distant past. However, that doesn’t rule out a comet strike in the future. We watched Shoemaker–Levy 9 plough into Jupiter in 1994, releasing massive amounts of destructive energy. Even if a large comet did vaporize before striking the Earth, the energy released by its vaporization could still leave a very destructive footprint beneath its flight path.
“Mr. President, I think that’s as much mileage as we can get from this illustration, but I have a few more which I think will complete the picture of our solar system for you.”
The president held up a hand and said, “Once again you are feeding me a lot of information, Eli. It’s all fascinating and, so far, not too scary, but I have a suspicion that the scary part is yet to come. However, before we go on, can you come back to Pluto? You said there were only eight planets, four solid inner planets and four outer gas giants, leaving out Pluto, which was called the ninth planet when I was in school. Then, later you referred to Pluto as being part of the Kuiper belt. Why has Pluto been demoted as a planet?”
“Yes, sir,” responded the science advisor. “That’s a good question. Actually, the dividing line between what is a planet and what is not is largely arbitrary. Pluto is certainly smaller than any of the other planets — about half the size of Mercury and smaller even than our moon. Because it is made up of frozen gas, like the gas giants, it has a very low mass, about 5 percent of that of Mercury. The latest definition of a planet includes a requirement that it has to be big enough to have cleared the space around its orbital path of most other objects, either by drawing them into itself or flinging them away. With its low mass, Pluto has not been able to clear its orbit of the many, many Kuiper belt neighbors it has. So, back in 2006, Pluto was placed in a new category called ‘dwarf planets,’ along with several other recently discovered objects that are of similar size to Pluto and that have other planet-like characteristics except for not having cleared their orbits. An example of another dwarf planet is Eris, which orbits further out and is larger than Pluto. There are several more that have been identified, and probably two hundred others in the Kuiper belt that have not.”
“Okay, I get the picture,” said the president, “we either have eight planets or, if Pluto-sized objects are allowed to make the cut, we have dozens.”
“Yes, Mr. President, which is a pretty good segue to the next picture I’d like to show you. Our solar system actually extends well beyond the Kuiper belt shown in the previous picture, and it has a lot more chunks of ice floating around than just those, like Pluto and Eris, in the Kuiper belt. This next illustration shows the eight planets, each with its orbital radius plotted to a logarithmic scale measured in AU, or astronomical units. One AU is the distance of the Earth’s orbital radius, about ninety-three million miles. Saturn is way out at ten AU, with Uranus and Neptune out quite a bit further at twenty and thirty AU.
“Our point of observation for this one is directly above the plane of the ecliptic, looking down. Once again, we see the eight planets, the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt, all of which would be moving from the bottom of the picture toward the top as they revolve around the Sun in their counterclockwise orbits. What I want you to take note of is the expanding zone called the inner Oort cloud, beginning at the outer edge of the Kuiper belt at about one hundred astronomical units out, and extending way out beyond one thousand AU. The inner Oort cloud is shaped like a flat ring similar to the shape of the Kuiper belt — though much broader in extent — but the inner Oort cloud extends into the Oort cloud proper, which is actually a thick spherical shell surrounding the solar system at the great distance of five thousand to two hundred thousand AU.
“That third picture shows the Oort cloud itself in
relationship to the rest of the solar system. The Oort cloud consists of about two trillion objects of varying sizes, primarily of the ice ball variety. Unlike the planets, the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt, all of which revolve around the Sun within a few degrees of the plane of the ecliptic, the objects in the Oort cloud revolve around the Sun in a chaotic variety of different directions and planes. Unfortunately, from a collision watch perspective, this also means that they could come at us from just about any part of the sky.
“So, Mr. President, you now have a pretty full picture of the playing field. As we’ve already touched on, there are three broad types of things that can fall out of the sky on top of us. There are asteroids, hard rocky or metallic objects, originating primarily from the asteroid belt but at some time those that now approach close to Earth have been thrown out of the belt and into a new orbit. Most of the objects we need to worry about are of this type. A near-Earth object, or NEO, is any asteroid or comet that follows an orbital path that lies inside or reaches within 1.3 AU of the Sun. In simple terms, it is an object that can get fairly close to Earth, which itself orbits at a pretty constant distance of one AU from the Sun. Of the known NEOs, there are many thousands of asteroids but only a few hundred comets.
Peregrinus Orior Page 6