“Everyone should wait until I have an answer,” said Elias.
“I understand your point of view Elias,” said Mark Sachs the new CEO of Starway Corporation. “But even though we have been able to support your research in the past I'm afraid that the corporation is finding it harder and harder to find funds for that support without some kind of return. I assume StarPath is in the same boat.”
“But Mr. Sachs,” said Elias. “When Arn Strombecker was running the company he promised me unconditional support. That is why we have a safe and reliable wormhole drive today. Without his support the drive itself through its effect on spacetime could literally have destroyed us. It was only because of the steadfast support of Arn that I was able to continue my work and find a solution to its effect on spacetime.”
“Yes I am aware of Dr. Strombecker's generous support of your work. But Strombecker had only one other competitor. We now have at least half a dozen corporations working on increasing the range of the drive. Some of those corporations are much larger and better funded than Starway and if they should succeed before we do then Starway Corporation could cease to exist.”
“I understand Mr. Sachs,” said Elias. “But I still maintain it is foolhardy to go into testing without a theoretical understanding of the power threshold that will cause a disruption of spacetime. It is simply not acceptable.”
“Dr. Mach I'm sorry you feel that way. But I must make the decision that is best for the Corporation. I think that the association between yourself and Starway Corporation has gone as far as possible. We thank you for your inestimable service but we believe it would be best to part ways at this time. Thank you for coming.”
With Mach out of the picture Starway started a crash program to get the new power supply and drive ready for a test. Although prevented from testing its version of the new drive system because of Dr. Mach's objections Starway was not that far behind StarPath. It was essentially a race to outfit a test ship with the new power plant and associated drive.
It wasn't long before the news media caught wind of the competition and recast it as a race to the death between the two corporations. The public became excited. Soon neither company could back away from the publicized test dates even if they weren't ready.
Elias watched the developments with rising alarm. He felt that both companies were moving too fast and disregarding the dangers. If they would only wait a few weeks he would have the limit calculated and they could proceed safely. But neither company responded to his warnings. And the news media gave him little coverage because it didn't contribute to the frenzy of the race.
The outfitting of the ships was essentially the same for both companies. A deep space fusion ship needed a revolving wheel like section to give the crew enough artificial gravity to perform their usual duties and eat and sleep comfortably. To turn it into a wormhole ship it was only necessary to add to the outer skin of the ship's wheel section the three layers needed to create the Mach effect.
Using the Mach effect as a guide Elias had derived an equation for a metric, a description of spacetime, that gave the geometry of a wormhole. He had then used the Mach effect to create the wormhole by generating enough negative mass to open the wormhole's mouth and keep it open.
The week after his meeting with Sachs, Elias was talking with his wife.
“They just won't listen Burgess,” said Elias.
Flores Burgess Chamberlain Mach was finishing her doctorate degree in Archaeology and had formerly worked as a detective to earn money to pay her way through school.
“You've done all you can honey, if they are determined to proceed so carelessly then they will have to take responsibility for the outcome.”
“Yes but if they would just wait a few weeks I know I'll have the answer.”
But the companies wouldn't wait. They had staked their reputations on the outcome.
Starway Corporation was the first to go.
The fusion ship Starway 6 had been retrofitted with the redesigned Mach device. Captain Daniels and his First Officer Vaughn would make a short wormhole jump to distance themselves from the Centauri system for safety reasons. At one hundred astronomical units (AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun) they would try the “long” jump.
The story went out over the media that the Starway Corporation was beginning the test. Almost immediately StarPath Corporation scrambled to put their system under test.
“I know Mr. Blanc,” said Dr. Mataan. “The pilots will be in position in an hour, we will be no more than two hours behind Starway.”
“Not good enough Dr. Mataan. We need to be first. I understand that Starway agreed to jump to one hundred AU just as we were planning?”
“That is correct sir.”
“Okay I want you to tell the pilots to jump to ninety AU and begin the test. If I understand correctly that will get the news back here first.”
“Yes sir that should get us word about an hour sooner than originally planned. But sir that would also compromise the safety buffer we had all agreed upon with Starway Corporation.”
“It's only a ten percent change Dr. Mataan, I can't believe it would cause a problem. Anyway we have no choice. We either announce a successful test first or we lose. And if we lose Dr. Mataan, we all lose.”
“Understood sir, I will inform the pilots of the change in mission.”
Captain Daniels checked the ships position.
“Starway 6 one hundred AU and holding,” he said. His voice being recorded and sent to Starway Corporation for logging.
“Roger Captain,” said First Officer Vaughn. “Power plant online and one-hundred percent. Ready when you are Captain.”
“Roger that. Engage the drive First Officer with a nine light-year target.”
“Roger that Captain.”
Out the front of the ship a shimmering light began to glow. The point of light expanded and became brighter. So far a typical wormhole engagement.
The center point of light continued to increase in brightness. Around this center, space started to shimmer and the stars started to spread from points into streaks. Eventually there would be a circle of light around the central point as a consequence of gravitational lensing, the effect by which the light of stars behind a massive object (the forming wormhole mouth) is distorted into rings or arcs around the object.
But instead of forming the wormhole mouth “bubble” as was usual the light started shimmering and breaking up.
“Captain something isn't right.”
The last words from Starway 6 were on their way to corporate.
Chapter 3
Wormhole Physics 101 by Dr. Elias Mach
Copyright 2393 C.E. - Chapter 1, Page 21
The Mach Effect
The Mach Effect describes a relationship between a particular mass and the universal mass. The physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach said in essence that the inertia (a measure of mass) that an object exhibits is caused by all the other masses in the universe.
This is easy to understand if one considers a single object in an otherwise empty universe. How do you measure its velocity? There is no reference by which to measure its coordinate change, therefore there can be no velocity. If there can be no velocity then there can be no resistance to a change in velocity, therefore no inertia. A subtle but logical argument.
When applied to the wormhole generator the Mach Effect shows that if a material's electrons are shielded from the universal mass then the large and negative “bare mass” of the electron will appear.
This again, is a simple argument and follows from the fact that electrons are surrounded by a sea of virtual particles and these virtual particles have a large positive mass. Since the electron's measured mass is very small, then according to simple addition, the electron's intrinsic mass must be large and negative. This “exotic” mass would display negative gravity and this along with the huge bare mass is just the thing to open and keep open the mouth of a wormhole.
The wormhole drive had been in us
e for almost a year. It had greatly facilitated trade and exchange between the Solar System and the Centauri System. The Star Way (which the Starway Corporation had built), a beamed-energy driven trade route using enormous lightsails, still carried the bulk of the larger freight but the wormhole ships carried the majority of smaller packages and had an absolute monopoly on passenger traffic. Actually there hadn't been much passenger traffic on the Star Way before the discovery of the wormhole generator since it was a long six year voyage to get from Earth to the Centauri space habitats, mostly any passengers carried on the Star Way were immigrating along with their life's belongings.
Now business men, vacationers and people visiting families traveled in the wormhole driven ships between the systems almost instantaneously. Already there was a growing business in starcations, packaged itineraries to the nearest star systems. A package from Earth could include a visit to the red dwarf Barnard's Star as well as the Centauri System and the brown dwarf binaries Luhman A and B. Luhman B was especially popular because of it's resemblance to Jupiter and its ever changing cloud patterns. The only other star reachable by the wormhole drive was Ross 154 but it was off-limits to the general public because of its X-ray outbursts.
Unfortunately that was all the star systems within range because of the current drive's limitations. While it wasn't impossible to colonize around a brown or red dwarf star, no one was particularly interested in doing so. Having the Sun and the three stars of the Centauri System was enough for most. Still there were those that were starting to feel cramped again. They were interested in moving on if only there were a way.
Michael Blanc was sitting in the communications center of StarPath Corporation in the Hadar habitat orbiting Alpha Centauri B. Hadar was a fairly recent habitat built in the form of two long cylinders attached at the ends which were spun in opposite directions to cancel their angular momentum. This configuration made it easier to orient the cylinders in relation to the star and keep the starlight more constant for lighting the interior and for power.
Hadar was bigger than any other habitat in the Centauri System, each cylinder being eight miles in diameter and forty miles long. With a population density of six-thousand per square mile the settlement cylinder was about as densely populated as a small town on Earth, but it could accommodate over four million inhabitants. The other cylinder of the pair held agriculture and industry, the workers were mostly robotic with a small contingent of people commuting each day from the settlement cylinder.
Blanc was joined in the communications center by some members of the board and the Chief Technologist, Ali Mataan.
“We should be getting the transmission any minute now sir,” said Dr. Mataan.
Then it started. The transmission began normal enough with the crew reporting the procedure. But just after the drive was engaged the co-pilot complained of an intense headache and the transmission went dead.
“Can you get it back?” asked Blanc.
But before anyone could answer the room began to shake.
“What is it? What's happening?” said Blanc. “Is this an earthquake?”
“Not and earthquake sir,” said Dr. Mataan. “I suspect it is disrupted spacetime.”
The shaking got more violent. Looking out the windows from the tenth floor was frightening. It looked like the cylinder was rippling along its length as wave after wave of disrupted and disintegrating spacetime passed. Then the safety glass shattered as the building began riding the ripples too.
Across the habitat people were thrown from their feet. Store shelves emptied into the aisles. Transportation halted as it was impossible to make way with the tracks and roads rippling.
The power circuits shut down to prevent any damage. The lighting would be affected soon, as the controls for the light reflecting mirrors that tracked Alpha Centauri B would no longer lock on the star. If the power did not come back soon the entire cylinder complex would be out of orbital alignment.
Blanc, Mataan and the other people in the room worked their way down the emergency stairwell. The shaking never stopped nor subsided.
“Why do you think this is disrupted spacetime Mataan.”
“At the end of the transmission the co-pilot complained of a headache. This was a typical side-effect in previous incidents.”
Blanc now began to worry about his well-being.
“How much of this can the cylinder take?” he asked.
“I don't know sir,” said Mataan. “But it was designed to flex instead of break. I think we are still within design limits if the ripples don't worsen.”
It must have taken five minutes from the time the shaking started until the time the group exited onto the street in front of the building. The scene was chaos. Electric trolleys were scattered haphazard with some on their sides. Electric cars were scattered around or had crashed even with their automated drivers.
Glass was everywhere. Some people were cut. Emergency vehicles were picking their way through the stopped cars and overturned trolleys. Mataan stopped to help a person bleeding from the head.
Blanc looked around in disbelief and horror. Scared for his own life and scared that someone might find out that he was the cause of this disaster.
“I know we've seen this before Elias but experiencing it personally makes it more than bad news,” said Burgess the day after the “quake”.
Elias said, “I just read that on Hadar and New Hope and several of the other space habitats a few people were killed and hundreds were injured. I think because of the smaller size of our habitat we were not shaken as badly. Anyway there have been no deaths here.”
New Hope was similar to Hadar only circling Alpha Centauri A along with the Centauri Two habitat which was the home of Burgess and Elias.
“Well even here people were just as scared,” said Burgess. “Obviously it was those new wormhole drive tests. I thought they had agreed to test those drives far enough away from the Centauri System so that nothing could go wrong?”
“That was the agreement but I would say somebody changed their mind. As far as what caused this disaster I should have more information on that when I get to my lab later.”
In his lab that morning Elias was able to gather information from the gravitational wave detectors orbiting Alpha Centauri A and his own Casimir detector which could measure the loss of entangled states in the local area.
Elias tried to use the gravity wave detector data to pinpoint the direction and distance to the area of disruption. But there was a problem, the waves were not simple but appeared to be a superposition, as if two or more waves had mixed.
Could there be more than two sources?
It would take some analysis before Elias could disentangle the resulting waveform and identify the direction and distance to the cause or causes.
Checking the Casimir device log Elias noted a definite fall off of local entangled states at the time of the shaking of the habitat. A tell-tale sign of spacetime disruption.
Okay, is it possible that both companies contributed to the disruption?
Michael Blanc was still worried. Not about the disaster that had hit the habitat the day before but about being found out. There had to be some way to cover his tracks.
“Sir I'm not sure I understand what you want me to do,” said Michel Bouchard, the IT expert for StarPath Corporation.
“I just wanted you to bring me all the telemetry data and communications between us and the NewPath 1 spaceship before it terminated yesterday.”
“Very well sir I'll make copies and have them to you this afternoon.”
“Don't worry about the copies Michel, just bring me the originals.”
“But sir that is against corporate regulations.”
Michael's voice hardened.
“I make corporate regulations Bouchard. Now do as you are told.”
“Yes sir,” said Bouchard relieved that the meeting was over.
Anything to get him off my back.
Hearings into the incident were organized
and set to convene in the Centauri Two habitat. Representatives from New Hope and Hadar had already arrived. Starway Corporation, whose offices had once been on Centauri Two and now were on New Hope, and StarPath Corporation both had their staff of attorneys present. The hearings had taken weeks to setup. By the time they started Elias already had the answer to the question of how far a wormhole drive ship could jump without causing a disruption in spacetime, he was attending the proceedings though he had not been called as a witness.
The head of Centauri Two's council-legislature served as Chairman. The Chairman called the hearing to order.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today not to accuse or judge but to inquire. We need to know, we must know what happened to cause the disruption in spacetime a few weeks ago that led to so much loss of life and property. If after this hearing there turns up any wrong doing on the part of private parties then that will be dealt with in a lawful way in a different venue.
“Now I am going to ask the Head Clerk to read a summary review of the incident before we start.”
The clerk read the review which went on for some ten minutes. During the reading a messenger brought in some news to the StarPath Corporation's attorneys. One of the attorney's whispered the news to Michael Blanc, he could be seen to be grinning broadly.
“Very well,” said the Chairman. “Now we will have the two private parties Starway Corporation and StarPath Corporation present their actions leading up to the event. As previously determined we will start with the Starway Corporation.”
The lead attorney for Starway rose and presented the facts and timeline of events as known to the Corporation's officers and board. He particularly emphasized that according to communication's records, wormhole operation and time of flight for radio communications, the Corporation could place its test ship at one-hundred AU just as had been agreed upon by the companies and scientists such as Elias Mach.
Mach's Metric Page 2