Standing on Quicksand

by Ric battaglia

The Snowball that never melted

  I remember distinctly where I was when I first heard about it. Ironically it was in a conversation involving something with which i had no knowledge, let alone cared about, and it did not include one iota of science. I was at a dinner party in the middle of a summer heat wave. Invited by a close associate whose wife had some bizarre romantic notion of setting me, a confirmed bachelor, up with one of her eligible, and might I add all too frequently desperate, female acquaintances. The subject of the conversation was children, or at least the child of one of the married couples present.

  They recounted a recent occasion when their daughter had a play-date at a friend’s house just outside the community where they lived. When she had returned all she could talk about was this object that the girlfriend had showed her. I admit that i almost lost interest at this point until they said that it had been a snowball.

  This immediately brought back fond memories of my own childhood when my father would save one snowball during the winter when mother-nature graced us with her white cloak. This snowball would then be extracted from the depths of the freezer like some holy relic during the following summer’s hottest day. We would play catch with it and shiver at the remembrance of its creation.

  This journal entry would be over now if that had been the extent of the conversation but the parents began to recount how they had attempted to extract more information about what they believed to be a toy of some kind, so that they might stealthily add it to their daughter’s Christmas wish-list. Several of the guests speculated that it must be a snow-cone machine or some such childish fad but their daughter had firmly stated that it was a snowball and that it did not melt. She had thought they were in big trouble when they had left the snowball on the back porch in the sun to run off and chase butterflies and had not returned until later in the afternoon only to discover that it had not melted or diminished in size whatsoever. My associate speculated that it may not have been made of snow at all. The father had said that a similar thought had occurred to him but his daughter had been rather emphatic, insisting that after she held it her hands had been very cold and moist with water. I, of course, brought the entire conversation to an abrupt halt when I speculated that this “snowball” was most likely made up of an amalgamation of possibly toxic materials and certainly nothing children should be playing with as there was a high likelihood that it was dangerous.

  The conversation eventually drifted off to other topics but my mind was always drawn back to this notion of a snowball that seemed to persist eternally. Even with all my vast scientific knowledge I could not fathom a reasonable explanation for its possible existence. At the end of the party after most of the guests had departed I confided in my associate the misgivings I had about the snowball and inquired if we should not look into it further for the scientific reasons as well as the safety of the children. Despite him suspecting that my later reason was disingenuous he did admit that such an inquiry may have some merit. Although he suspected the whole thing was hog-wash he agreed to make some inquires of the parents who were at the party.

  Several days later, true to his word, he called me and stated that not only had he obtained the name of the family and phone number but called them and set up an appointment for that very evening. Despite the prospect of being a childhood fabrication I took the precaution of packing my bag with a few supplies and pieces of equipment before leaving the lab.

  Upon arriving we were warmly greeted and led to the family’s country kitchen. The father explained that his daughter had found the snowball while playing in the near-by woods that previous winter, which had been an exceptionally snowy one. He stated that to his knowledge the snowball had relatively maintained its original size, if anything had slightly increased despite having been left out for days at a time. When he went to the freezer to get it you can understand my skepticism increase but he said that it had become force of habit that they often kept it in there as his daughter had become quite fond of it. There seemed always the hesitation that it would just melt away.

  “My daughter even had the strange notion that it might be a piece of Frosty the Snowman and contain magical qualities. Who am I to counter that as it seems pretty incredible to me”

  After the snowball was placed onto a baking sheet on the counter my associate and I began our cursory examination after donning rubber gloves. The Geiger counter registered minimal radioactivity. This was the first test we ran on the object itself to ally initial worries by my associate that we may have already been exposed to lethal levels if the core contained radioactive material. The diameter was approximately 13cm and its surface did indeed appear to be formed of fine, crusted ice particles. Reading its surface temperature with a handheld thermal scanner at multiple locations and time durations it held steady at 0-degrees Celsius and at certain instances dipped slightly lower. Sniffing, it had no noticeable odor. I carefully chipped of a small sample and placed it into a test tube and sealed it. This sample soon melted into a clear liquid resembling water. We each held it enveloped in both our bare hands and had to quickly withdrawal before too long because of intense cold. Our palms had only the slightest dampness as the result.

  At the end of our examination we were no closer to solving this mystery. If anything we were more perplexed for the entire duration of the investigation, which lasted a little less than thirty minutes, nary a drop of water, let alone a puddle developed under it in the warmth of the kitchen. The snowball itself seemed to give off a cold radiance. We found ourselves at an impasse as the pieces of equipment I had brought with me were too rudimentary to conduct a more thorough investigation. My curiosity had been piqued as never before and after a brief discussion with my associate we implored the family to allow us to take the snowball back to our lab where we might run more thorough tests. The father admitted that when my associate had called his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he was eager to find out how this magical snowball could keep from melting. They granted our request once we made promises to return the object intact with a detailed analysis. Unfortunately, only later, did I realize that there hadn’t been any possibility we could have kept this promise.

  We wrapped the snowball in a towel and stowed it in a plastic tub for transport. Once we got the object back to the lab my associate phoned his wife explaining that he would be working late as I began setting up a battery of tests. We mutually agreed to not involve others until we had a handle on what we were dealing with that way if it turned out something elementary our reputations would remain intact.

  While my associate was calling his wife I thought it prudent to conduct the procedure in one of the airtight, blast-proof experiment chambers. This felt like a logical precaution as we had no idea what the snowball consisted of.

  The spectrometer showed that the sample I had chipped off into the test tube was nothing more than common water, dihydrogen-dioxide with trace amounts of sodium-chloride and potassium-iodide, quite expected as the snowball had been handled frequently and both elements can be found commonly in oil from human skin. Under an electron microscope neither the melted water nor surface contained any evidence of living or dead matter. This had been an initial worry of my own, that this element was somehow alive and there was the danger of viral or bacterial infection to which we had already been exposed. This allayed that fear but raised new lines of inquiry.

  Next we did a thermal scan and this is where things began to get really interesting. The detailed image revealed that in cross-section the temperature decreased the closer to the core and in the center was a small circle. The screen revealed that it was about 4mm in diameter and surrounding this center the temperature was showing an astonishing result which we had to run once more to be certain. Not only was the center not registering a temperature at all the area immediately surrounding it was close to absolute zero, which is the coldest temperature possible, some -273degrees Celsius. This was a surprise because the laws of thermo-dynamics govern that absolute zero cannot be reached u
sing conventional means and even to get close was quite difficult in laboratory conditions let alone maintaining it for more than a short amount of time, yet this element seemed to be self-sustaining it with no source. The core not registering a temperature seemed a new enigma.

  In hindsight perhaps this is where we should have stopped and sought assistance but we were too enveloped by the enthusiasm of discovery. Our consensus as to the next course of action was to drill an 8mm hole to the core.

  Worried about unexpected combustion my associate suggested using the pneumatic as opposed to the electric drill with a high density carbon fiber drill bit that would be able to withstand the intense cold. The drilling was slow and conscientious but soon we reached the core and withdrew the bit. There was a faint whistling that emanated from the sphere. There was no change to the scan image on the display screen. After passing our hands in front of the hole it seemed to be using the Venturi effect to pull air into the core thru the small hole. Our excitement grew and we immediately activated a thin fiber optic camera and began inserting it into the hole while simultaneously watching the video feed on a nearby monitor. The tip of the fiber tube slowly traveled down the hole. The anticipation was palpable and I could feel my heart rate increase as it got closer to the core. Once it reached the core though it kept going, taking more and more of the fiber tubes length, far more than the diameter of the snowball. Our breathing had become accelerated at the expectancy of what we might see. On the screen the display was fuzzy which prompted me to play with the focus and chromatograph levels in an attempt to get a clearer picture. It was more difficult than I would have thought as I was having a hard time concentrating and my fingers felt strangely numb. Finally the fish-eye lens sharpened and on the screen blackness appeared with points of light of random and varying intensities. “Stars...” I heard my associate slur just before he unexpectedly fainted onto the floor gasping for breath. All I could do was stare at him in disbelief, gasping for breath myself, and as the realization came to mind of what was happening and how stupid we had been, all went black.

  I awoke as if from anesthesia, instantly, with absolutely no sense of time having passed. I appeared to be in a plastic quarantine enclosure within a hospital room and attached to various medical apparatus. The nurse, after seeing that I had regained consciousness sought the doctor.

  Instead a well-dressed man entered and introduced himself as an agent of the National Security Administration. After initial inquiries as to my health he began questioning me about how much I remembered, where the object had been obtained or created? Did I know its origin? I explained myself thoroughly and soon found out that my assumptions just before blacking out had indeed been correct. Somehow the core of the snowball was some sort vacuum and it was only after we had drilled the hole that it began sucking the air out of the airtight experiment chamber in which we had been conducting our investigation. My associate and I must have been so excited that we hadn't recognized the early signs of hypoxia until it was too late. An alarm had alerted the night watchman who had come to our rescue.

  I inquired as to the condition of my associate and immediately noticed a slight change in the man’s expression. Unfortunately my associate had not been as lucky as I and was still in a coma. The medical staff was still evaluating how much brain damage had been done. After reassuring me that they were doing all they could, he insisted I sign a non-disclosure agreement, which I dutifully did.

  Soon after being released from the hospital I was invited to participate in the NSA government research team studying the ‘snowball’ object. I would like to think it was because of my credentials and scientific acumen but in hindsight it might also have been to keep a close eye on me, making sure I would continue to abide by the non-disclosure agreement.

  Despite initial skepticism my hypothesis in the hospital proved true no matter how unlikely. The core at the center proved to be some sort of wormhole, a tunnel thru space/time conjectured by the theory of relativity as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. One end of the tunnel existed at the snowball and the other end apparently residing in the cold, deep recesses of the vacuum of outer space. From its initial point of origin in the woods where the little girl had discovered the snowball it seemed apparent that upon opening, the hole must have sucked so much air and snow along with it that a sort of spherical ice plug had formed. Even though the star pattern as seen thru the hole had been compared to every known star map on file on some of the most powerful computers on the planet no match had been found. There seemed to be debate as to where the other end of the wormhole might reside but there was a high probability that it did not occur in the Milky Way galaxy, as no recognizable clusters are apparent.

  Negligible radiation or chemicals were detectable so it was strange but there was no method or apparatus the research group could devise that would detect the wormhole more than 10 meters away and this was mostly due to air pressure difference and a slight magnetism.

  There has been only conjecture as to the holes origin or why it could be moved in physical space but one theory put forth by a prominent quantum physicist seems to have taken hold. The hole is a kind of tear in the cohesiveness of the universe, not unlike a small hole that might develop if a fabric is stretched just beyond its modulus of elasticity and the strands begin to pull apart. The resulting strain may be a sign the universe might either tear itself apart as it continues expanding or begin contracting to its big bang beginning. It can be moved similar to the way strands of a woven fabric can be tightened to move strain to another apparent location. It seems that the ramifications are almost too complex and varied to figure out in a thousand lifetimes.

  There were ideas battered around about how or if the wormhole could be expanded thus allowing a probe to be sent thru but all attempts seemed infeasible. Besides that the stability of the wormhole could not be verified to any certainty or guarantee be made that once the expansion procedure was initiated that it could be controlled, let alone stopped. The fact that it had not changed dimensions on its own accord was not surety that the tear would not increase in size in the future. In the end I believe the fears outweighed the possibilities. From what I was able to gleam after the conclusion of our study the top military officials and government leaders came to the final decision that the wormhole was just too dangerous to keep on the planet. If it did unexpectedly widen and was unable to be contained the entire atmosphere of the planet could be sucked out its orifice thus leaving our planet a lifeless rock. I wonder if that is what might have taken place on other planets such as Mars. The red spot on Jupiter now began to look a little more ominous. The very last I heard was that the snowball was packed up and secretly placed aboard a non-descript military communications satellite which was then placed in high geo-synchronies orbit. The thought apparently being that it was far enough away in the vacuum of space so as not to pose a threat but close enough to be accessible if future need arose. For all I know that is where it resides to this day.

  With the writing of this journal entry I am violating the terms of the non-disclosure agreement that I signed all those years ago. It seems pointless now, what punishment could they sentence which could cause greater suffering than I have already endured. Years of pent-up frustration having to watch “advancements” in fields of science which would have either been disproved or diverted into more promising directions if knowledge of the wormhole had been disseminated. Besides that, with the end so near, I felt an obligation to dispense this knowledge so that future generations may be able to make real progress.

  The image of this snowball forever orbiting the earth like an ant-size artic moon has always haunted me. Recently I have been possessed with the thought of when or if another tear might appear on earth. Imagine if the one we found had not occurred during a snowstorm and been naturally plugged. Of course another tear might have already occurred and not been discovered yet. Let us pray that our precious atmosphere isn't now being sucked out thru a small wormhole as you read this…..

 
Interlude #2

  The most effective proselytizing I have ever witnessed was a person simply acting out their beliefs without any imposition or expectation of something in return.