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“Do you know,” Gert slurs her words after a couple of glasses of wine. “Your friend, Ivan, never did tell us what his little secret was that he had up his sleeve.”
“You’re right, he didn’t. He’ll have to save it for next time, eh?”
They have both dropped off to sleep when the bus, which is less heavily loaded than the one in the morning, reaches the terminus in Bossington, and they have to be woken by the driver. Harry resolves that he would thank Ivan for his excellent hospitality at the earliest opportunity. That doesn’t take long in occurring. Ivan phones him the next day and asks if he has any other photographs of the new star, or even any of that part of the sky from before it first appeared. Harry says he’ll have a look.
“Look at the area near to the star,” Ivan advises. “Have you got a good sky chart? Norton’s would be fine.”
“No, but Gert has an old copy.”
“The epoch doesn’t matter. Just take a look and get back to me if you see anything strange.”
Harry calls Gert and asks her if he might drop in this afternoon, and would she kindly have her Norton’s and her father’s microscope available.
He arrives just after two o’clock, with a parcel of photographic prints, plus his reliable notebook recording all their details.
“Ivan asked me to look at all the photos I took of the star, and any of that part of the sky from before then. That was the difficult part, but I think I’ve thinned out the possibilities, though some of these may be no good. You honestly don’t mind helping me, do you?”
“No, this is so exciting. I feel almost as if I am a real scientist — an ‘amateur astronomer’ as Ivan said in his tweet — have I got the right word there?”
“But you are. A scientist is simply someone who wants to know more about the world and the universe around him or her! And they always do it by gathering evidence and trying to find theories that fit that evidence. Then they or someone else tries to prove that they are wrong.”
“Oh!” Gert exclaims. “Why on earth should they want to do that?”
“Because if there is some evidence somewhere that proves the theory to be wrong, then they must try to look for a better theory. Don’t forget that for thousands of years people thought that the Sun went round the Earth; it was the obvious explanation if you think about it. But then along came others who saw flaws in the argument, so they revised the theory to say that the Earth goes round the Sun, which is more or less correct. Or so we believe now! What if we are quite wrong about that?”
“Now you’re teasing me!” she laughs.
They open Harry’s envelope of assorted prints. “Let’s spread them out on the table and put aside the ones that obviously don’t belong,” Harry suggests. “I have already taken out some, but I couldn’t do them all this morning.”
“My word, there are hundreds here. Shall we sort them into three piles — those that clearly belong to the right part of the sky, those that clearly don’t, and the rest that we can’t immediately decide on?”
“An excellent idea.” They start the work, but it is rather confusing and time consuming as they aren’t exactly sure of which part of the sky some of them are. This one could be some out-of-the-way area, or a close-up of just what they are looking for. The Star Atlas gets a lot of use, for, although both are fairly familiar with the sky, there are some groups of stars that could be almost anywhere.
“This isn’t getting us very far, I’m afraid,” Gert sensibly says. “On the back of each one, you’ve got the time and date and some other details of the film, but nothing about the piece of sky you photographed. This star has been with us for only a few months, it seems, so why don’t we arrange them all in chronological order, working backwards, and look at them from that point of view.”
“You really are a scientist. Why wasn’t I so logical in my thinking?”
They apply Gert’s method, turning all those they haven’t so far rejected face down and arranging them as she said. That itself was quite a chore, but as the last one is in position, Gert says: “Now we turn them all over one-by-one so that we don’t lose our place.”
Of course Ivan has the last two in the sequence, but they know which area of sky they are interested in, and the latest ones they have show (or should show) the star. They examine three more but can’t identify them.
“This one shows it,” says Gert. About two-thirds of the way from Dubhe to Merak, just past Σ 1495.”
“You really know your way about the sky! Please fill this ignoramus in! What are Dubhe, Merak and Σ 1495?”
“Dubhe is α in Ursa Major — the brightest star in the constellation, magnitude 2, Merak is β — the second brightest, also magnitude 2, and Σ 1495 is a faint star in the catalogue that was compiled by an astronomer named Struve — I’m not sure who he was; anyway his star is around magnitude 6. Can you see it, just there? Our star is much brighter, somewhere near magnitude 4, a bit dimmer than that star at the end of the handle of the Plough, where it joins the pan — that’s δ.”
They continue sorting through the photographs, rejecting several. “That looks like the area round the Pole Star to me,” Gert says of one. “Turn it upside-down and you’ll see.” Her knowledge of the sky is clearly far greater than Harry’s. Then they find several together dated just after the new star appeared. They go back beyond that crucial date, but nothing can be found in the appropriate position. There they stop. What should they do next?
That same day, both Anna Hobson and Clive Morgan arrive at Tiverton and have similar brief interviews with Ivan. His current preoccupations are split between organising the courses for both the undergraduates and research students and trying to come to terms with the problem of 2009UMa7.
He calls Martin and Louisa to his office and asks them: “Has either of you heard of a star called 2009UMa7?”
Neither of them has.
“There’s a suggestion that it is something to do with that star that caused the Black-Out. Can you work together on looking at the data about the star? I took some observations of the star just before the power all went off, but I didn’t get the chance to take more than a cursory look at them, so you might come up with something. It’s all on this DVD. See what you can make of it. I know it’s throwing you in at the deep end, but it’s not a test of your knowledge of astrophysics, just a possibly interesting view of the sort of things we have to do, and the follow-up that’s so often needed. If possible, use the library or the internet to look things up. I assume you can both find your way around the web?”
They both can. Louisa takes the DVD just as Ivan’s phone rings.
“Ivan, it’s Harry. Gert and I have identified a dozen pictures taken since the star appeared. Do you want us to look any further back?”
“Not at this moment, but for heaven’s sake don’t lose them; they may contain something useful, we just don’t know. Have you seen anything unusual in any of them?”
“No, not really.”
“Are they all to the same scale?”
“No, on some I used the zoom.”
“Excellent! What level of magnitude do they go down to?”
Harry passes the question to Gert, who is more savvy. “Gert says about ten, though not all of them. In some the seeing was quite good and in others rather poor.”
“Can you let me have the negatives — only to borrow, of course?”
“Yes, certainly. Shall we come over to see you, or would you like to come here? Or we could post them.”
“No, don’t use the post; I don’t trust it. Would you like to come here next Saturday? We could go to that restaurant again; I know Gert liked it!”
Harry passes Ivan’s suggestion on to Gert who is keen to go on. “And tell him he’s not to forget to tell us his little mystery about the star this time.”
As he replaces the telephone receiver, Gert tells him: “I’ve just found a photo that is out of sequence. I’m sure it’s the right area of the sky; look, there’s Dubhe and Merak and our brown dwarf, but where’s Struve’s star?”
Harry looks closely and is convinced that she has a good eye for such things.
For Wilf and his neighbours, their jobs are returning to normal, though there is a lot of work to be done to clear backlogs. His wife is restoring their supplies of food to their freezer and refrigerator, as they slowly become available to the shops and supermarkets from their wholesalers. They are very relieved at this state of affairs.
The only ones who are not happy are those who lost loved ones, most of them during the first night of the Black-Out. Everyone tries to console them, but even in Bossington some twenty people lost their lives in one way or another: car crashes; one whole family was killed in an air crash when their plane, which was supposed to take them on the holiday of a lifetime to Florida, fell out of the sky and their bodies were never found, lost at sea; other deaths occurred because the local hospital had no means of treating their patients or keeping instruments running.
Wilf and his friends’ ‘games’ of nominating who they would like to see killed seem rather sick now, and nobody mentions them out of embarrassment. In fact they are, in a sense, relieved to see the Prime Minister back in charge, and all those ‘horrible’ Royals, footballers and their WAGS, TV presenters and film stars. They all bring back a feeling of normality to the world; somehow they are comforting, and people seem more relaxed and amicable towards each other than before the Black-Out; even the ironmonger can manage to smile despite his bereavement, and receives condolences and friendliness in return.
Ivan also that day has to welcome some new undergraduate students, and pack them off to the library to read up what they can. He and his fellow lecturers are still planning details of new courses; most are based on last year’s courses, as seems the most appropriate course of action, with a few changes where the science has advanced in the meantime.
But his main task is to give last year’s third-year students their results. He prepares two lists: one of results that are fairly clear; the other of less obvious, borderline cases. He calls a meeting of his staff who were involved in lecturing this group of students, and he also has their examination results available. Eventually they all agree on the degree grades to be assigned to each, and Ivan starts the round of telephoning each, having first prepared a standard format letter on the department’s headed embossed notepaper, to be posted to them as soon as possible.
Tuesday begins with a staff meeting to thrash out the details of the undergraduate courses. Naturally, as these things go, the meeting lasts all morning, but it has resulted in a timetable for all the lecturers and an outline of their responsibilities.
In the afternoon, Ivan calls in his research students.
“What do you make of 2009UMa7?” he bluntly asks them.
Martin starts the report, as he was the first to get his hands on the task. “It looks as though it is a brown dwarf with nothing special about it. It is probably quite close to the solar system, possibly closer than Proxima Centauri, which is four light-years away.”
Louisa adds: “We couldn’t identify a disk from the data you gave us, but we did find out that most brown dwarfs are thought to be about the same size, with masses a few tens of times that of the planet Jupiter.”
“We assume that its appearance last year was because it emerged from behind or inside a cloud of dust,” Clive says. “But it’s only an assumption, though we can’t find any other explanation that fits.”
“Did you find any other observations of it before June last year?” Ivan asks. “For example within the previous few years?”
“We didn’t look back that far,” Anna replies.
Ivan explains his question. “It’s just an idle thought that I had about the possible connection between that star and the Black-Out. If we assume it’s closer than four light-years away, and it caused the Black-Out, it presumably sent some kind of signal towards us some time within the last four years, as nothing travels faster than light. So whatever that signal was, the star should have been visible to us at some time in the past four years, and before the Black-Out.”
“Unless it had homed in on us earlier and had transmitted a signal that penetrated the cloud of dust,” Martin remarked. “That’s not impossible, is it?”
“A good point. Nevertheless, I think we should see what there is, perhaps on the web, about sightings in recent years. Could you see if anything’s on record anywhere; use the internet — it’s a powerful tool, but beware of cranks and know-alls! I’d like you to work as a team on this at the moment. But you need to give some thought about what you’d like to do as your own personal research project. One useful tip is that you keep a log of anything you just can’t understand at all; this is not to catch you out, but I need to know what help you may need as you are all from quite different disciplines. For example, has any of you considered the three-body problem?”
There is a blank look from all four.
“No? It’s all about the mathematics of the orbits of systems like the Earth, Moon and Sun. Kepler showed us that the planets move in elliptical orbits round the Sun, but that was taking a single planet and the Sun alone and ignoring everything else; what are the mathematics of a system consisting of three or more objects? No? I don’t know either! Nobody has yet been able to work out a proper mathematical model in that case — like Kepler’s ellipse for two objects; now extend that to the whole Solar System, or the whole galaxy or the Universe. By the way, I’m not suggesting that any of you take up that problem as your research project. But if you need any help, be sure to ask. I can spot a cover-up or a bluff a mile away. OK? And remember I’m on your side! Right, ‘Squad: dismiss!’ as my old Flying Officer used to say.”
Wednesday is a real commotion, as all the three years of undergraduates have arrived, and expect to go straight into their courses of lectures. Fortunately Ivan’s staff have planned out this week’s lectures and seminars, as well as a schedule of individual tutorials. So they are able to continue with years 2 and 3 more or less from where they left off as years 1 and 2 when the Black-Out came.
Ivan takes the twenty-five new students into one of the main lecture theatres and goes through a very quick initiation into how the University and, in particular, his Department work. They receive a standard sheet of paper that covers the whole site, with a detailed plan, and vital information such as phone numbers and e-mails of staff who are there to help them. For example, each student has been allocated a small office — a few shared — and a PC connected to the University’s intranet and with specific access to their own Department’s discs of programs and data. If they need any specific software, the IT Department is there to help. Later in their course, they’ll almost certainly go to observatories, in the UK, Europe or anywhere and the Travel department is there to help them make the appropriate bookings of flights, hotels and anything else they need. Ivan tells them that they need the approval of at least their appointed tutor for anything that requires the expenditure of more than £10. Trips to places like the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile will be organised centrally.
As this is, for the majority of them, their first time living away from home, they must not hesitate in asking for help about the most trivial or domestic matters; they have come to Tiverton to study Astrophysics, not to worry about where the nearest launderette is. “If in doubt ask your tutor or the accommodations office,” he tells them. He gives out a second sheet with all their names, office numbers, phone numbers and e-mail accounts, as well as the same information for each member of the staff, including himself.
“Now go to your own offices, check it out, make sure you can use your PC. The cafeteria opens at 12, but it’s usually at its busiest between 12:30 and 1. After lunch, at 2, make your way to your tutor’s office and you’ll receive more detailed course material, as well as a timetable of when you are to see him. You are mostly in groups of five, so these offices are going to get a bit crowded today. Thank goodness it’s not too hot weather-wise. Good luck to you all!”
Thursday and Friday are mostly occupied by Ivan in sorting out problems of a domestic nature, especially from the new students. For example, one has left a vital suitcase at home in Manchester; can he claim the return train fare to go home this weekend? Sorry, no. Others have financial problems because of the inability of some banks to set up the right type of Student Loan accounts; can they postpone paying their fees until this is sorted out. In view of the exceptional nature of the last three months, Ivan gives his approval to this, and sends the student off to the Bursar’s office with that message. The Bursar has encountered this problem several times, and agrees that such leniency is quite appropriate under these exceptional conditions.
Ivan also calls in his research students and asks them how things are going.
“I’m sorry to have left you all this week to your own devices. You had every right to expect a properly constructed professional course but I beg your indulgence as this has not been an easy start to the term, for obvious reasons.
“I recall leaving you with a question about earlier observations of the star 2009UMa7. Anything to report?”
Anna answers for them all. “Nothing really. Everyone connected with the main telescopes, Hubble, the VLT, and lots more are too busy recovering from the power loss. We have all looked at academic web-sites across the world to see if any of them have posted reports or photographs of the relevant area, but nothing fresh has come up, I’m afraid.”
Louisa adds: “Martin’s knowledge of French and Anna’s of some Chinese helped us with some of the foreign data, but we’ve basically drawn a blank.”
“Pity,” Ivan observes. “There’s also a web forum about the star. I should have mentioned it before, but it hadn’t really come to any view of what the star was than you already know. You could try e-mailing Jean le Camp in Paris and Fred Schuster in Canada, who have posted notes on the forum. Mention my name. Don’t all flood them with questions or the poor guys will wonder what’s going on; organise that yourselves, OK?”
On the Saturday, Gert and Harry take their seats on the five past nine bus, which is fortunately less packed than on their previous journey. Life is returning to some sort of reality.
Ivan meets Harry and Gert at the bus station and drives them to his college. They go up to his office.
Harry reports: “Well, Gert noticed in one of the photos that the star Struve 1495 is missing. It seems to be in all the others that cover that area of space.”
“Excellent! That’s just the sort of thing we were looking for. I’m so glad you found that. That was my little mystery from your previous visit, the one I teased you with. Some of us had noticed that Struve’s star was absent, and indeed some other stars were much fainter. Harry, did you bring the negatives of the interesting ones?”
“Why, yes. What do you want them for?”
“I want to digitise them, to pixellate them?”
“What?!?” exclaimed Gert. “You’re going to do what to them?”
“I’m going to turn them from the sort of photos they are now into digital images.”
“And what are those when they’re at home?”
“They are the sort of pictures that the computer can handle much more efficiently; it should be able to tell us more about Harry’s pictures and also to be able to compare them with our own. Believe me it’s much easier than looking at photographic prints with your own eyes. We let the computer do the hard work.”
“But going through Harry’s pictures was such fun, not knowing what we were looking for,” Gert protests.
“Yes, but I’m sorry to tell you that it isn’t very efficient. Imagine trying to find a needle in a haystack; it’s a lot easier if you’ve got a powerful magnet.”
“Well, I suppose so,” she concedes. “Or a small pile of hay!” and they all laugh.
“Can you give me the negatives, and some way of identifying them? I see you’ve got the date and time on the back of the prints; that should be fine.”
“Is that enough? Don’t you want the magnification or the location that I photographed.”
“No. The computer can work that out for itself.”
“How clever!” Gert adds. “Is there anything it can’t do?”
“Make a good cup of tea,” Ivan jokes, adding: “But I expect that’ll be possible soon! The Japanese are said to be working on robots for use in the home.”
“Never!” Gert exclaims. “I’m sure it couldn’t make a cup of coffee as good as I can, eh Harry?” who nods.
Harry hands him the first slide, which Ivan puts into a plate at the top of the computer, and tells him the date and time. There are a few clicks, buzzes and whirrs from the computer as Ivan types in this information.
“It won’t damage the slide, will it?” Harry asks. Ivan lifts the cover and takes off the slide.
“No, don’t worry.” Ivan hands the slide back to Harry.
They continue in this way until they reach the last one. As it is taken out of the computer, Gert asks: “Now what?”
“This may take some time. Each slide will be transformed into a form that the computer can use better and then it will compare it with the slides from all the other computers in the world that have been following the star.”
“How many slides are there?” Harry asks.
“About six hundred altogether, though most of them are on other people’s computers. In that case I have just a summary of the information, so if we find anything similar to any of yours, or which contradicts it, for example, I can load the picture from the other computer.”
“So you can read or see what other people have? That’s not very private, is it?”
“They only make available what they want other people to see.”
“What about my pictures. Can other people’s computers look at them?”
“No, not at the moment. But if we find anything that seems relevant, I may ask you if I can let others see it.”
“While we’re waiting, let’s have that cup of tea. Is Earl Grey acceptable?”
“Oh very acceptable. I remember you always had Earl Grey at college.”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Gert adds.
Having spent some twenty minutes making and drinking tea, Ivan suddenly notices that a message has appeared on his computer screen. It says:
Twelve photographs digitized. Comparing these with other photographs.
“That’s the first part completed. Now we must wait and see how they fit in with other ones.” They have another cup of tea. Another message pops up, comparing one of Harry’s pictures with a Hubble photo. It says that Harry’s photo, taken two weeks after Hubble’s confirms a dark ring around the new star.
Ivan types several commands into the computer, and uses the mouse to select various options. “This photograph was taken ten years ago and clearly shows Dubhe, Merak, and Struve 1495.” There are also many more stars and galaxies in the image, but no sign of the new star, whose position is marked by a red cross, as Ivan explains to the other two.
“This is Hubble’s photo two weeks before Harry’s.” He toggles between them. “They are to the same magnification. Notice the differences. The second one shows the new star very clearly, but can you see what else has happened?”
“There’s a sort of dark ring round the new star.”
“And this is Harry’s.”
“It’s similar to the second of Hubble’s.”
“Yes, but can you see the change?”
“Hubble’s shows more dim stars round our star,” Harry says.
“Yes, but should yours show them?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. It shows quite a few of the others with the same brightness.”
“Now watch this,” says Ivan. “I’m going to delete from the Hubble photo all those that are fainter than the faintest ones in Harry’s.” He clicks a few menu options on the screen. “Now Harry’s and Hubble’s look the same well away from our star.”
From the bottom of the previous column
“But close in, Hubble shows quite a few more,” says Harry.
“Which means that whatever has blacked out the other stars has got bigger. Or that they have been obliterated. At the moment we can’t tell, and there may be another explanation or explanations. I’m going to do some more work on this. Meanwhile does anyone fancy lunch? Same place as before?”
The decision is unanimous. Yes!
After an excellent lunch, which once again Ivan insists on paying for, they return to his office.
“What do you make of it, Gert?”
“Well, I’m not a scientist, but I could hazard a guess or perhaps two.”
“A non-scientist’s view is always welcome. We scientists often become blinkered in our ideas, and we read into some things things that aren’t really there, just because we want them to be. We try to ‘think outside the box’, but it can be difficult.”
“What do you mean by ‘think outside the box’?”
“We mean that we try novel approaches or things that might seem to be nonsense; they are outside the box that our tiny minds are in.”
“I see. What an interesting phrase. I shall remember it. Is it another bit of ‘computer-speak’?”
“Could be. Have you read Orwell’s 1984?”
“Yes, many years ago, well before 1984 actually came along. He uses ‘-speak’ quite often, like ‘newspeak’.”
“Well, any ideas, Gert?”
“I was thinking about my splurge of green. Stars have spectra. Can we associate my green with the spectrum?”
“I have already tried that. Unfortunately there are a large number of elements and molecules that occur in stars and have that sort of green colour in their spectrum.”
“But what if it isn’t really a brown dwarf, but something else? Is there a close match with other elements that don’t occur in them?”
“A good thought!” Ivan exclaims. “That’s what we mean by ‘thinking outside the box’. We have all been assuming that it is a normal brown dwarf. Everything else is right about it, well not everything, obviously because of its sudden appearance and strange behaviour. Harry, any thoughts?”
“I’m puzzled by the dark ring around it. Could it be ejecting some kind of soot — I use the term loosely, of course?
“Perhaps it has always been surrounded by this soot,” Gert suggests. “That’s why we never saw it before.”
“And if it exploded, it blew away the soot, like a ring of tobacco smoke,” Harry adds.
“Interesting ideas. But why have we never detected it before? If it was drifting across the sky, the soot should have hidden other stars beyond it. Brown dwarfs are really very feint, so if we can see them in small telescopes they must be quite close to us.”
Harry is silent. They come up with a few more crazy ideas that seem to lead nowhere.
“We can’t waste any more of your time,” says Harry. “If we find any more boxes to think outside of, we’ll be in touch. And please let us know what your computer friends are making of the problem.”
About half-way home on the bus, a man and a woman climb on board, who Harry recognises as residents of their own village. They sit behind Gert and Harry.
The man tells his wife: “Clifford next door was telling me that he was playing about with an old radio the other day. He said he picked up some kind of signal of buzzes. He said it reminded him of the noises in that film Contact that we saw with Gladys and Fred. He said it made him wonder if that new star that caused the Black-Out could be an alien civilization.”
“Sounds daft to me, Wilf,” replies his wife. “Anyway, we don’t know it was the star that caused the Black-Out; how can a star do that?”
Harry is awake and outside his box enough to wonder if there might be something in it. Gert is fast asleep and snoring gently. Harry turns round and speaks to Wilf: “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help overhearing what you just told your wife.”
“And rubbish it was, too!”
“I would like to meet your neighbour, Clifford, and discuss it with him. It’s just that I’m interested in extraterrestrials too,” he quickly makes up an excuse.
“Yes, he lives at number 45 in the High Street, a few doors up from the pub.”
“I’m most grateful. Thank you,” turning back to face the front of the bus.
And he hears Wilf’s wife mutter: “Another one who’s losing his marbles!”
The following morning, without saying a word to Gert because the idea might get her worked up and then turn out to be absolutely nothing, Harry walks down the hill and calls at 45, High Street. A man answers the door.
“Good morning. My name’s Harry Highgate. Are you Clifford?”
“I am as it happens.”
“I understand that you’ve encountered some radio signals that are rather like the sounds in the Carl Sagan film Contact.”
“Well, yes, maybe I have. Who told you?”
“Your neighbour, Wilf. It happens that I am interested in the possibility of life on other worlds. Perhaps we could have a chat about it. What Wilf said sounded as if it could be interesting.”
“Maude!” Clifford calls out. “Just going to have a pint, OK?”
“S’pose so.”
“Is that all right with you?” Clifford asks Harry.
“Yes, fine.”
Over a couple of pints of real ale they discuss the possibility of life elsewhere, of which Clifford is absolutely certain. Harry asks him for as much technical information as he can think of, such as time of day, radio frequency, exactly what did the sounds do — did they repeat, were they long or short pulses and so on. He’s getting a little uncertain that he’ll remember everything, so he asks: “Do you mind if I write this down?”
“You’re not a reporter are you? I want a proper fee if this is published. News of the World — ‘Screws of the World’ my Maude calls it! Ha, ha! They pay hundreds of thousands. Pounds, not peanuts.”
“No, I just happen to know a scientist who is working on this sort of thing. I promise you on his behalf, that if anything comes of it, your name will be in the credits!” (Has he gone too far? He’s not even sure how scientific news gets published, except on the web that Ivan described. But if extraterrestrials are actually involved, he’s sure that everyone who made any sort of contribution would be mentioned, after all it would be such a big story, the tabloid papers would probably want an interview with Gert’s budgie!) They go over the information again, with Clifford absolutely insistent that his name is correctly spelt, and Harry hoping that he’s got all the ‘technical’ information correct from this man who is perhaps ‘losing his marbles’.
“After the war, I got an old radio receiver from the... well, it doesn’t matter where. But it had loads of different bands it could receive on, including 21 centimetres, and that’s where I found them, the aliens, like Contact said. Trouble has been getting valves; finally I found someone in Exeter who stocks them.”
Back home, Harry phones Ivan, who at first laughs and then admits that there could be a grain of truth in it. Harry gives him all the information he has, repeating the proviso that Clifford is properly acknowledged. “Tell him I’ll buy him a pint if it turns out to be true; no, perhaps on second thoughts, you’d better not; half a pint! Nevertheless, thanks for the info. There may just be something in it. I’ll ask on the web.”
“Just one further thought, and this one’s mine; can we find out from any of the Hubble photographs how fast this cloud is expanding? If we go back several years are there photos that show stars that have since vanished? Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“Mmm... I’ll see what I can find out.”
“And I read somewhere that shock waves can appear to move faster than light. I don’t understand it, but... well... See you soon!”
For the next four weeks, the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Exmoor at Tiverton gradually resumes a more-or-less normal routine.
The undergraduates mostly settle back into their routines, though a couple of second year students are having some trouble with some of the material, and their tutors attempt to solve this by doubling the number of tutorials they have each week. Ivan’s diktat is ‘If we’ve got sixty undergraduates, I want sixty first-class honours degrees by the end of year three’. This is obviously over-ambitious, but with luck and effort, it is a good target to aim for.
Ivan is anxious to press his post-graduates as far as possible, so he arranges a public meeting for 15th November which he wants one of them to present. It will be on the subject that everyone has their mind on: The New Star and the Black-Out, subtitled Our Knowledge So Far. The four will all work on it as a team, with whatever help he can give, but they are to choose one from amongst themselves to deliver the public lecture. Apart from Martin who is rather reticent about it, the rest unanimously choose him as their front-man; after all, he did get a first class honours degree, though what relevance that has eludes poor Martin.
The team brainstorm and note everything they know about the star and its relevance to the Black-Out. Ivan checks several early drafts and advises them that he only wants facts, not speculation; they must make it clear when they are making intelligent guesses at the truth, but must under no circumstances present guesses as truth. “You ‘know’ and I ‘know’ that the star somehow caused the power cuts; but that’s just an intelligent guess, not proven,” he points out.
During the final week of the four, Martin collates everything he believes he needs and generates the artwork needed for the presentation. On the Thursday, he presents what he has to the other three, who are quite enthusiastic about it.
“Should we go to Ivan with it?” Martin asks them. “After all, he’s the boss.”
“No,” Louisa replies. “We all agree it’s got the right tone and content. Let’s run with it.”
“OK,” agrees Martin. “I just want to tidy up a few things. Does anyone else have anything for me to add or change?”
“Stick with it!” Clive advises. So Martin does.
It is almost a month before Gert and Harry visit Ivan again. Winter is starting; there is a cold wind, the sort that Gert calls a ‘lazy wind’ because it goes right through you rather than round. The morning mist has turned to drizzle and it will probably rain soon. Ivan has invited them along because, as he explains to them, Martin Smith, a bright young postgraduate student has collated all the information they have about the new star and the Black-Out. He is giving a public lecture entitled The New Star and the Black-Out, and subtitled Our Knowledge So Far.
The lecture theatre is almost full, just a few empty seats, when Martin enters to some moderate applause. He is introduced by Ivan who has set him this task, and he clearly hopes to get his thesis for a doctorate based on this research. There is a computer on the bench in front of him, and he is aided in his lecture by a projector which is able to show the computer screen to the audience.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he starts. “The subject of this lecture, as you know, is the new star that appeared in Ursa Major on 17th June last year, the apparently associated power failures that coincided with it, its reappearance and the end of the power cuts. Copies of this lecture are available at the back of the lecture room; they are free, but a donation of £5 towards its printing would be very welcome. As you probably know, Universities are always strapped for money.
“In case anyone has come here today expecting to get the complete answer to the problem of the new star and the Black-Out, I’m afraid you will be disappointed. I propose to deal with our present knowledge, to suggest a few lines along which future research might proceed, and tentatively to eliminate those things that are most unlikely.
“But I want to take you first back to 4th May 1997. Here is a view of the sky in the area of interest, taken by the Hubble Telescope at 19:07 UAT. I should make it clear to you that most of these photographs and diagrams have been adjusted to the same scale and orientation, and to the same depth of view wherever possible, except the first photograph and a few later diagrams. That means that we are comparing like-with-like and any irrelevancies have been eliminated, such as dim stars — dimmer than anything likely to be interesting, galaxies, and so on. This will allow us to concentrate on the things that we believe are important.
“This first photograph, over twelve years old, is the exception to what I just said about eliminating very dim stars. It shows everything in view down to magnitude 17. The position of the new star is at the centre of this red circle,” he indicates with the cursor an empty black space near to Struve 1495. “Just in case anyone thinks this dark area is something special, I can show you very many other dark areas in this image, all at least as big as the red circle.” He touches a key on the keypad, and almost half the screen is covered with red patches where previously they were black. “At the wavelength at which this image was taken, much of space is dark, with no stars or galaxies — including importantly the place occupied by our new star.
“One suggestion that has been made is that the star has moved its location in the sky since this picture was taken. While we cannot rule this out, none of the measurements taken recently, within the past year, has shown any significant proper motion. As I shall describe in a few minutes, the star is believed to be very close to us, less than ten light-years distant. Therefore we suppose that a large proper motion would have easily been detected, unless this star has very efficient brakes!” There is a little scattered laughter.
During the pause Harry whispers to Gert: “What’s ‘proper’ motion?”
“Motion across the sky rather than towards us or away...”.
Martin has resumed: “So from now on I shall assume that the star is more or less stationary, at least so far as its proper motion is concerned. In other words, the star should have appeared on the first Hubble photo that we saw just now either at or very close to its present location, even allowing for the motion of the Earth round the Sun. Why should it have appeared there at all? Because just last year, when it suddenly appeared — or rather, when we first became aware of it — it had a magnitude of 4, and appeared to all observers with the appropriate equipment to have been a ‘normal’ brown dwarf. It is very close to us, twelve years ago, a stationary brown dwarf star would have probably been at least magnitude 8, and well within the capabilities of any astronomer, amateur or professional, to see with the smallest telescope, possibly even with binoculars. Our conclusion is that unless the star is very unusual, and not a normal brown dwarf at all, we should have all been able to see it. And if it is very unusual, why does it show all the right characteristics of a normal star? It certainly isn’t a supernova — a suggestion that has been published in the popular press — which, at its distance, would have knocked the living daylights out of us!
“Please take a look at this sequence of photographs, to the same scale and orientation as those you’ve already seen. I have marked the current position of the new star again by a red circle. This first was taken in 1928. Now I will fairly quickly pass through the remainder of this set. Please observe, if you can, any differences between them. There are ten photographs in all and they all show stars down to magnitude 12.”
He shows the audience the sequence of photographs, allowing about three seconds for us to look at each.
“Too fast? Here they are again, same photos, with an interval of about six seconds this time. Look for what you can’t see, as well as what you can.”
This time they have more chance of seeing the photographs and focussing in on what is happening near the new star.
“Now I’ll show you the same sequence, this time indicating in red the areas of sky that are large and dark, just as I did before. When you’ve seen them, I’d like to hear any comments that you may have.”
Again they see the sequence, this time with dark areas highlighted in red.
“Any comments?”
“The area of red — the darkness — seems to be expanding,” one elderly man remarks. “May I ask if the time interval is the same between successive photographs?”
“Yes, more or less. The ten photographs were taken at approximately eight-year intervals, so if there is any uniform activity taking place, it should show up as a uniform effect. And I think you’ll agree that the expansion of the dark area is approximately uniform. The change shows up on each photo and is regular. I’ll show that same sequence again, for those of you who aren’t convinced, with a thin line showing previous areas.”
Harry observes to Gert: “Isn’t it marvellous what they can do with computers these days!”
But before she can say anything Martin resumes: “So to summarise, since at least 1928, there has been no trace of this star until last year. In fact none of us has been able to find any trace of it since stellar photography began. Furthermore, we have started going through some of the earlier works of astronomers who sketched the sky by visual observation through their telescopes. In this latter group there are a small number, about six or seven instances, that show something in approximately the right position, but we cannot be at all certain about them — they may simply be other stars whose position or magnitude is slightly out. We will be doing further work on this, but my personal view — and I am aware that a scientist shouldn’t let his own views influence his work — my personal view is that nothing conclusive will be found.
“Our present working assumption is that the star has existed for a very long time, and that until recently, it has been hidden behind a cloud of dust, meaning that it has never been seen by anyone on Earth before, certainly not since the invention of the telescope and its use in astronomy by Galileo at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I should point out to those of you in the audience who are not familiar with modern astronomy that there is believed to be a large amount of dark material in the galaxy, indeed in the universe, so what I am suggesting is not at all a new concept. We often call it ‘dust’ when we can see its effects; some people have called it ‘soot’ because it is very dark in most cases.
“Then, on 17th June last year, the star appeared from behind the dust cloud. Let’s assume that one day it was bound to emerge, and it happened to be then. To some scientists, the idea that something unique or special has occurred during our own lifetimes or periods of observation is too anthropocentric; I will not deal with this debate now but will leave it to the philosophers. As soon as the star was observed, many telescopes were trained on it, and extensive measurements taken. All that stopped a year later, as everyone knows. But not until we had established that the star appeared to be a fairly normal brown dwarf; it was part way through its evolution when we saw it, and we did indeed assume that we had missed the earlier part of its evolution because it was obscured by dust or soot at the time. Brown dwarfs are normally formed by a cloud of dust that is contracting. If the cloud is large enough, the contraction continues until nuclear reactions can start, and it becomes a true star, like our Sun. A brown dwarf is too light to be able to contract to form a star, so the light we see from it is caused not by nuclear reactions — well mostly not — but by what we call ‘gravitational’ energy.
“Anyway, to go back to the power cuts, with no electric power like you, we were unable to do any serious astronomy. Like many others among you we tidied our desks, filed our nails, read some old books (real printed ones) and did a few odd tasks, but without electricity, we had no proper access to telescopes — which rely on it to power their motors and keep them looking at the same bit of sky. Our computers were also rendered useless.
“Since the power returned, we have been first repairing the damage that the prolonged power-outage did to our computers. Then we have been using the observations of the star since that date to monitor its development. I must report, Ladies and Gentlemen, that nothing of particular note has been found.”
“To be honest, I used not to know what a computer was; I thought it was someone who took the train to work,” whispers Harry.
“That’s a commuter!”
But Martin resumes his commentary: “I should remind you that there is on this university’s web-site a set of reports of the discovery of the star in 2009, and its development until a few days before the Black-Out. I can now add that no further unexpected events occurred between the last report published there and the Black-Out.
“Except one.
“An observant photographer who likes to take manual photos of the sky pointed his camera, which contained monochrome film, at the point in the sky where our star of interest lay, and saw a flash of light. He has kindly loaned us the negatives that he took that evening, and, with little doubt, some sort of flash did occur just before the star itself vanished from sight. This same gentleman described the flash as being in the form of an arc of a circle, and it had a distinctive green colour. The arc is confirmed by the photo, though the colour was not, because he was using black-and-white film.
“However, he discussed the matter with a neighbour who was painting the clouds over the sea that evening, and one of her paintings shows what she describes as a ‘splodge’ of green light in the position of the star. She says that she thought nothing of it at the time; she is a very instinctive artist and paints what she regards as her impression of the subject. But both these people agree that the colour that she ‘splodged’ onto her canvas was the same for each of them.
“We have analysed her painting, to see if the colour corresponds to the spectral emission lines of any element or simple compound. So far we have had no success, I have to report, though the investigations are continuing; like everyone else our budgets are constrained, I’m afraid. These two people have asked to remain anonymous, but with their permissions, the photographs and paintings are reproduced in our report. I would point out that these are copyright and under no circumstances may be reproduced in the press, on the internet, or elsewhere without permission.”
“Now I will come to the Black-Out.” A murmur of renewed interest goes through the room.
“Until 23:36 on 21st June, the electricity supplies and everything that depended on them were normal. Then suddenly, as everyone is no doubt aware, they stopped. Power stations stopped and everything electrical with them. For many people this was an utter disaster — literally. Reports from across the world suggest that over twenty million people died; many more than in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 or in the worst earthquake we have ever experienced in recorded time; and many more people — I’m afraid we just don’t have accurate data — were injured, and a lot are still recovering in hospital; some, unfortunately will never recover from their injuries.
“Electricity was restored, almost as if nothing had happened, on 8th October at 20:16, worldwide. For 3½ months the Black-Out had lasted.
“As a scientist, my natural instinct is to be dubious about coincidences. The natural order of the macro world is that every effect has a cause; coincidences are just that — they are unconnected events. However, coincidences need to be investigated, because sometimes they are connected. For instance, the Sun and the Moon appear in the sky to be almost exactly the same size; this is a coincidence. The Moon is moving very slowly away from us, so in several millions of years time it will look smaller than the Sun; then, the Moon will never completely cover the Sun. Their present equality of size is just a coincidence, and a jolly spectacular one it is when there is a total eclipse of the Sun. We are just very lucky to be alive at the right time.
“So let us look at exactly what the coincidences are with the new star and the Black-Out.
“The strange star that we are concerned with here first appeared on 17th June 2009 at 18:36, according to our most reliable sources. It was examined telescopically and seemed to be a normal brown dwarf star, part way through its final extinction, part way because, as I have just pointed out, we believe it was hidden behind a cloud of dust from which it emerged at that time.
“On 21st June 2010, at about 23:36 the Black-Out occurred; by 23:47 on the same day, the star vanished — some observers give the time as 23:41. There were at most eleven minutes between the events, possibly only five minutes or perhaps even less.
“On 8th October at 20:16, the electricity was restored. At 20:17 on the same evening the star was seen again.
“So we have two events occurring, at most eleven minutes apart, neither having ever been recorded before. 3½ months passed. Then within one minute of each other, these two unprecedented events were reversed. Those are the coincidences to which I refer. They are too closely related in time for us to ignore, pass on and dismiss them merely as ‘coincidences’. That being the case, we must look into what caused them, what events were taking place that have apparently never been experienced before. Of course it may turn out that there is an explanation that shows that the two events are indeed coincidental, just as I remarked before, the Sun and the Moon are the same apparent size in the sky.
“My current line of research is into the connection between the star and the Black-Out. I have not so far made very much progress, but I put out this appeal to any person who may have an idea to contact me. I don’t care how crazy the idea may seem. It is by making bold changes to one’s paradigm of the way things are that lead science on. Where would we be now if Isaac Newton hadn’t related the falling of an apple from a tree to the motion of the Moon around the Earth. Or if Albert Einstein hadn’t asserted that it made sense that the speed of light is the same however fast one is moving?
“I won’t ask for questions now, as you know just about the sum total of my knowledge of the subject; a few extra details are given in the copies of this lecture, available as you leave. Please contact me with any ideas you may have.
“Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your time this afternoon.” And with that he sits down to a round of somewhat muted applause.