‘Europa’s aurora is beautiful even without the shift enhancement but with the waveband processing you can even see the progressive influence of the father’s storm belts. You’re lucky to see it as it is tonight with the close presence of Io. Io’s over here. Not the volcano tormented basalt rock that you see in the bright daylight is it?’
Doctor Sara Wenford stepped quietly up to the broad wallscreen. The tenuous atmosphere of Europa presented a soft ribbon of colored bands that waved and dipped across the darkened sky and onward past the massive rim-bright orb of dark Jupiter. A smaller orb glowed nearby marking the location of beautiful Io. Like Europa, Io’s atmospheric gases were being ripped by high energy electrons cast from father Jupiter. About the poles of the moon glowed a halo of green and red. Across the tortured face were bright blue sparks and plumes of volcanic vapor cast from the moon’s surface up into the high-energy electron storm of the father, Jupiter.
As you would expect from a field paleontologist, Sara was darkly tanned and muscular. More often described as handsome rather than beautiful, these characteristics were enhanced by her athletic build and obvious high level of curiosity.
In spite of the breathtaking scene before her, Sara wondered when Mark was going to get to the point. ‘Why am I here when I should be back on earth helping to solve the more interesting mysteries of evolution?’ Sara thought as she half listened to Mr. Nolen. Of course, most paleontologists have heard of Mark Francis Nolen and some lucky ones, like Sara, received generous grants to support their field studies. The field grants did not make a lot of sense to Sara. Most of the Nolen Foundation’s patents and papers involved quantum gravitonics, a subject far from the evolution of dinosaurs. However, the regularity of a known income sure made research easier so why question a welcome gift.
Nolen’s call to the institute had been a disaster for Sara but she could not deny his command. Nolen is a major contributor to the college. Sara was drafted right out of her position in the university. The instructions told her to prepare for a two or three year absence. GraviDynamics, Nolen’s major holding corporation, provided legal help to get her family’s affairs in order.
The move had been very disturbing and all too abrupt. They cancelled her long-term work schedule with the university and had a new contract directly with GraviDynamics put in place. They handed her research collaboration off to other colleagues. Sara now seriously doubted just how wise she had been to take the Nolen Foundation grants. Those grants with the employment-call clauses that, she now realized, were so plainly stated in the contract.
Sara and her family had been living at the new base located right on the dig in Patagonia. GraviDynamics packed up her family, put most of their possessions in storage and they left with no chance to even say goodbye to their friends. To say that she was a world away from her work would have been an understatement. Sara was clearly out of her element. Back home their field-team was entering the third season of excavations. They had been looking for artifacts that might clarify some of the stranger avian lung characteristics of dinosaurs that have recently emerged. She would not be there as a participant in these discoveries.
As compensation, Nolen extended some vague promises of future success and notoriety. There was also a position waiting for her husband and schooling for her twins. What possible use could Nolen have for Sara Wenford here on this unusual moon of Jupiter?
Mr. Mark Francis Nolen in person looked both tall and young; better than he did on the news vids. Sara knew from the news blogs that both exercise and expensive NanCell robotics helped him maintain his youthful appearance. Nolen’s enthusiasm is contagious; rapidly moving from project to project as only a man in love with his work can do. Nolen is part of a breed of self-made men. A species whose origins went back to the electronics revolution of the last century. Men who would not put up with the formal path to a degree that led to sequestered studies within a university and the static protectionism of corporate tenure.
In school, Nolen had taken the courses that interested him ignoring many of the prerequisites for a climb up the degree ladder. He left college early and struck out on his own before graduation to follow the dream of quantum gravitonics. The famous triumvirate of Nolen, Sanders and Hsu had embraced the theoretical quantum constructs of Levy who first recognized and modeled the Nobel yielding particle-wave duality of gravity. The three entrepreneurs saw the potential of the subparticles of the electron now known as microleptons. Theories that they made real to craft an interstellar engine capable of near-light velocity by harnessing the power of gravity. Now, fifteen years later man had set foot on almost every planet of the solar system. GraviDynamics also successfully launched an expedition to our nearest neighbor Alpha Centauri. The starship continued to communicate home using the faster than light gravitonic wave transmitter/receivers that were a valued byproduct of the drive.
Never one to avoid a confrontation, Sara turned from the display to take advantage of this first meeting. ‘Mr. Nolen I want to thank you for the opportunity to travel to Europa Station. I frankly never thought I’d get a Tycho Resort Lunar trip much less an exclusive visit to see Jupiter up close and personal. I’ve signed your non-disclosure agreements. Would you please tell me why you were so forceful in drawing me, and my family, so far away from my work?’
The aggressive posturing of Sara didn’t surprise Mark. He liked people who challenged him and spoke their mind. At his whim, Sara had just undergone a major disruption in her life. He felt he owed her the courtesy of this introduction.
‘Ms Wenford, this otherwise depressing piece of the universe is the Europa Station. For half of the three-plus day orbit we sit in darkness. Then the second half of the orbit is spectacular if you get a chance to look. Father Jupiter’s tides pull the oceans, the surface ice cracks and groans and water volcanoes spew out into the sky for hundreds of miles. Our hold here is difficult but the easy extraction of high purity oxygen, water and base hydrocarbons supplies all of the basics critical for asteroid mining and our new star-jump program. That is why we are here. You are here because I need your knowledge and expertise for an expedition that is soon leaving from this station.’
‘I want to brief you before we move into the general meeting with the others. First I want to introduce you to this fellow walking down the hall toward us along with Thomas whom I think you have not met.’
‘Doctor David Pope, I would like you to meet Doctor Sara Wenford. Sara will be our Paleontologist. David is our Naturalist. He also qualifies as a professional hunter and trapper. I believe you will be seeing quite a bit of one another.’
David turned a huge grin toward Sara, ‘Pleased to meet you Sarah. I assume you’re as awestruck and excited at this as I am. Please don’t let that “hunter” business upset you. My work is primarily conservation but when they need someone to find the animal then they call on me. The two professions go hand-in-hand.’
Sara looked at David and then again at Mark, pursed her lips and said, ‘You may know a bit more about this than I do Doctor Pope but I can’t imagine what I would want from a hunter much less a naturalist. Did you find something unexpected on Alpha Centauri Mr. Nolen? Even if you count the evolution of theropods into modern birds, there would be small justification for spending this kind of money for my research on some extra-terrestrial life form.’
‘Sara, please call me Mark. I may be your employer but we will be working very closely for the next few years. The others you will meet tomorrow have been with me for more than two years. They know most of the history of our work or they don’t have a need to know it to the depth that you do. So I need to bring you up to date very quickly.’
Mark slipped his hand into his coat pocket and removed a small black metallic pad. He touched its side and it split into two horizontal plates that he pulled apart and set flat on a nearby table. ‘This is one of our new products that we call an Emulate Projector. You can interface it using your Hive Tab. I assume you both have the latest Hive Tab? In any case we’
ll be giving you new ones that allow you to directly interface with one of these as well as our libraries.’
Sara had a basic Hive Tab. Sara’s older model required her to hook it behind her ear where it would directly link her into the university database and library. All researchers used them for textual record keeping and research data mining as well as archival video on the dig. Hive Tabs had long ago replaced the cumbersome, weather sensitive lab-books and cameras. The newer Hive Tabs of GraviDynamics were a thin flexible disk smaller than the tip of your finger. The Hive Tab is placed on the mastoid bone behind the ear. It provides both expanded communication and recording ability by rapidly exchanging data and even visual images directly with the brain. With the new Tabs the user can directly share data and images with the library center or between individuals.
Mark slid his finger across the lower face of the Emulate Projector and the area between the plates glowed slightly with a few sparkles flickering in it like stars in the night. ‘This presentation will be a little easier if we can visualize the concepts. It also gives me a chance to show off our Projector.’
A three dimensional GraviDynamics logo along with the theme music appeared floating in the middle of the plates. The logo turned and spun out to be replaced by a small, spinning atomic cluster that waited for Mark to begin the presentation.
‘The Emulate Projector or “EP” sets up a partial vacuum filled with only atmospheric derived Nitrogen between the plates by accelerating the unwanted gases out from the display area using the basic principles of our Gravitonic Drive. The Drive will be the subject of this presentation. With this simple example, you can see how the Drive can move, by mass selectivity control, any molecule in the field. We use the same concept to sweep small debris from in front of our ships during flight.
The emitter on the top plate of the EP ejects fine streams of energized electrons through the plasma. Each stream forming a Transversely Excited Atmospheric Laser often called a “TEA” Laser. The projector creates the images by exciting area-selective photon emissions in the pumped cavity and color shifting their emissions into visible wavelengths using frequency multipliers. Continuous tuning of the selective areas of the plasma for brightness and color results in a wavefront projected to your eye that emulates the rays that the three-dimensional object would reflect.’
‘A little bit about the Gravitonic Drive. Almost a century ago, two Russian scientists, Spartak and Oleg Poliakov, published a paper based on a theory that the speed of gravitation waves is much greater than the speed of light. They speculated that the electron, a basic particle that exhibited weight, charge, radius and a magnetic moment was a key contributor to gravity.’
‘Physics at the time did not understand electron spin or the internal microstructure of the particle. Poliakov Theorized that all of the more puzzling electron characteristics could be explained if the electron itself was composed of subparticles called microleptons. Microleptons contained an internal gravitational component typically independent of the outer world and a larger external component imparting the electron’s at-rest characteristics. At-rest, the hidden and immeasurable gravitational component of an electron possesses a mass value that is 137 times greater than the visible rest mass of the classic electron. Models of this structure imply that a single electron that is excited to emit gravitational radiation contains a potential mass energy that is 1040 times stronger than the classic gravitational constant of the entire earth!’
‘So the potential gravitational force of a single electron can be a ten with forty zeroes behind it times the pull of the earth. Similar to but with much more potential power than a nuclear reaction, this is all unused energy when the hidden electron mass component is not excited.’
‘Now, any rotating object with charge exhibits a magnetic field and has its own gravitational energy. A gyroscope spinning at a constant speed emits no gravitational radiation. The sources of gravitational radiation can only be seen from non-linearly moving objects or objects that are in the state of change of phase. This behavior explains the difference between “strong” and “weak” interactions of classic physics. It also implies that gravitational radiation passes through a mass with very little interaction since the radiation will only interact with the gravitational field of an independently gravitating mass.’
‘Key on this very important fact. A gravitational source is any magnetic gyroscope with a variable phase or radius working in the continuous mode. Therefore, electrons can be sources of gravity. Gravitonic radiation does not interact with mass but with the fields of an independently gravitating mass and the strength of the interaction is controlled by rapidly changing the electron gyroscope’s radius, or spin speed. Poliakov’s experiment not only confirmed electron subparticle response but also demonstrated that gravitational waves travel many times faster than the speed of light.’
‘A GraviDynamics engine is not an engine in the classic sense of providing an impulse or push to an object to move the mass. GraviDynamics products control excitation and spin to all of the electrons in the mass by accelerating the electron’s microlepton spin-response. If you are a passenger on a mass that is a ship, then you never feel a push or turn because every object and individual on board is part of the effect. Every electron controlled by the drive accelerates along the gravitational field in a reaction-less glide. By this same principle, the gravitonic field of this projector display accelerates the electrons of the non-nitrogen gas molecules between the plates to push them out and form a weak vacuum. This leaves only nitrogen and select trace elements that we can excite to emit laser radiation. As you see, the effect can be applied to broad masses or very much smaller molecules.’
‘Here’s another application of the principle. Using small impulses, we can bias the effective gravity you experience by accelerating your body toward or away from a fixed surface. We use this effect to provide earth gravity here on this station in spite of the fact that Europa is actually smaller than the earth’s moon. Stronger impulses could physically move us along the gravitational wave and out into the stars or crush us flat onto the flooring if something went wrong. Unlike the science fiction of the past there is nothing artificial about this gravity.’
‘Control of gravitation sources allows gravitonics to accelerate an object to near light speed. Theoretically we should be able to move anything we can put a field around at velocities greater than light speed without the fear of acceleration damage. Practically we have not been able to break the light barrier with our Gravitonic Engine for objects with significant mass.
However, since gravitational radiation is wavelike, we can modulate it for communication purposes. This provides communications travelling many times faster than light-speed. We use this technique to communicate and follow the real-time progress of our pioneers currently on the way to Alpha Centauri.’
‘Do not fear, we will not be asking you to travel to Alpha Centauri. The light-speed barrier for physical travel is however, the crux of our challenge.’
‘Alpha Centauri is about 4 light years away. At about 0.95 the speed of light it’s going to take our crew four and a half years to get there. The next nearest destination is Bernard’s star at six light years. At this rate, it is going to take us a long time to reach the nearest earth-like planet other than the Earth. Our problem is that our models do not fully understand the interactions of mass and gravitation. The power of our engines can accelerate any appreciable mass that we can envelop in a gravitational field but they appear to be limited to a light-speed barrier. The problem must lie in our equations, we are missing something. Some of our assumed constants in the model may actually be very slowly changing variables. Any variables masquerading as constants will vary too slowly to see any changes in our lifetimes or in our history of their measurement. What we need to confirm this is a peek at the measurements of the universal constants as they would be millions of years from now.’
With an expansive wave of his hand, Mark walked over to the wallscreen. ‘He
re enters the benevolent father Jupiter. Ah, I see the glaze in your eyes. Please bear with me Sara for just a few moments longer. You will find this next part interesting.’
‘Jupiter has remained a mystery in spite of the five centuries that we have known about this massive giant. Conventional textbooks describe this gas giant as a failed star of about twelve times the diameter of the earth. It has a high rotation speed of eleven hours, the fastest of all the planets. The mass is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined. Our astronomers have always assumed it to be a large mass of gases that at greater depths simplify into first liquid and then a viscous fluid hydrogen with a small rocky core at the center.’
‘Like all gas giants, the planet has been shrinking and therefore energy is given off as it collapses on itself. The fact that Jupiter is still shrinking in size caused astronomers to theorize that in it the process of planet formation is still going on. This contraction provides internal heat currents that cause cylinders of material to rise and fall and appear to be rolling in different directions across its visible surface. The tips of the cylinders generate the unusual motions or banding in the atmosphere. Unexplained by this model is the behavior of the giant red spot. The spot is approximately three times the diameter of the earth and remains fixed in its motion relative to the bands of clouds surrounding it. The Red Spot is an obvious anomaly; it even rotates in a direction counter to that of the bands.’
‘Probes recently sent into the planet’s atmosphere have been able to confirm some of the gas banding down to a depth where fluid molecular hydrogen should have been encountered. Instead of hydrogen, the probes ran into a storm of exotic particles that rapidly led to the destruction of each craft. We could penetrate no further.’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 3