choose….
NARRATOR
When
Discoverer’s
transmissions reached Earth, few indeed were the persons who kept a measure of calm.
(The office of the astrophysicist)
IONESCU
—speculations that began to be heard when the flyby observations came in, seem now to be confirmed. As far as we can tell, that thing is a Tipler machine.
I call it that in honor of the theoretician who, extending the work of Kerr and others, published in 1974 a paper on this exact subject, which afterward he pursued farther with imagination as well as mathematical rigor. True, he was forced to make certain simplifying assumptions. However, he did use strict, well-established principles of physics to show that transport across space-time was conceptually sound though apparently requiring conditions impossible to achieve in the real universe. (Smiling) I’m afraid the proof is rather esoteric. What it amounts to, in everyday terms, is this. A cylinder of ultra-dense matter, spinning at a speed in excess of one-half light’s, will generate a field. Not a force-field, in the proper sense. Call it, instead, a region in which some quantities vary according to your position. A body passing through that field can be transported directly from event to event. In more popular language, depending on what path it takes, it can go from any point in space-time to any other in range of the machine.
As I said, this effect seemed to demand impossible conditions. For instance, it called for matter densities many orders of magnitude greater than that of nucleons themselves, such as might conceivably exist within a black hole but nowhere else. I therefore suspect that the density we have measured for yonder cylinder, high though it be, is only a mean; that it increases within, to the point where black hole-type phenomena occur; that at the very center is an actual singularity. How the Others have achieved this, we can only guess—we can speculate that the weak energy condition may, after all, in the right circumstances be violated—and most likely our guesses are dead wrong. With a little more confidence, we think that the finite length of this real-world object limits the range of its effect: though obviously that range is interstellar and perhaps it is interepochal.
We are also beginning to get an inkling of how the cylinder stays in position with respect to Earth. That position is not stable. Planetary perturbations should cause a body there to drift away from it in a fairly short time. Yet presumably the device has been where it is for centuries at least. What gives it its station-keeping capability? Analyzing available data, we thinkprobably there is a continuous interaction with the interplanetary and the galactic magnetic fields, though this too must take place throughout awesome distances.
I hope to live long enough to see us gain a little more knowledge about the creation the Others have added to Creation. We may even, at last, find a way to make our findings comprehensible to the layman—or to ourselves.
(The professorial contenance glows) But no matter now. What matters above everything else today is that we have been given the chance for a fresh beginning!
NARRATOR
Before
Discoverer
returned home, the Voice offered to conduct her through the star gate and back. As Fernández-Dávila said afterward, “How could we not have accepted?”
(Views of a vessel which later traced the route, photographed from a companion ship. They are interspersed with simulations and animations, as well as pictures taken during the maiden venture. This and the narration make clear what happens. The spacecraft moves from sphere to sphere in a precise order.)
VOICE
The globes are simply markers, navigational aids. With their help, you can follow the exact path through the transport field which will bring you to the place prepared for you.
Have care! Any different path will take you to quite a different destination. It may well be that no machine exists there. You would
NARRATOR
When
Discoverer’s
transmissions reached Earth, few indeed were the persons who kept a measure of calm.
(The office of the astrophysicist)
IONESCU
—speculations that began to be heard when the flyby observations came in, seem now to be confirmed. As far as we can tell, that thing is a Tipler machine.
I call it that in honor of the theoretician who, extending the work of Kerr and others, published in 1974 a paper on this exact subject, which afterward he pursued farther with imagination as well as mathematical rigor. True, he was forced to make certain simplifying assumptions. However, he did use strict, well-established principles of physics to show that transport across space-time was conceptually sound though apparently requiring conditions impossible to achieve in the real universe. (Smiling) I’m afraid the proof is rather esoteric. What it amounts to, in everyday terms, is this. A cylinder of ultra-dense matter, spinning at a speed in excess of one-half light’s, will generate a field. Not a force-field, in the proper sense. Call it, instead, a region in which some quantities vary according to your position. A body passing through that field can be transported directly from event to event. In more popular language, depending on what path it takes, it can go from any point in space-time to any other in range of the machine.
As I said, this effect seemed to demand impossible conditions. For instance, it called for matter densities many orders of magnitude greater than that of nucleons themselves, such as might conceivably exist within a black hole but nowhere else. I therefore suspect that the density we have measured for yonder cylinder, high though it be, is only a mean; that it increases within, to the point where black hole-type phenomena occur; that at the very center is an actual singularity. How the Others have achieved this, we can only guess—we can speculate that the weak energy condition may, after all, in the right circumstances be violated—and most likely our guesses are dead wrong. With a little more confidence, we think that the finite length of this real-world object limits the range of its effect: though obviously that range is interstellar and perhaps it is interepochal.
We are also beginning to get an inkling of how the cylinder stays in position with respect to Earth. That position is not stable. Planetary perturbations should cause a body there to drift away from it in a fairly short time. Yet presumably the device has been where it is for centuries at least. What gives it its station-keeping capability? Analyzing available data, we thinkprobably there is a continuous interaction with the interplanetary and the galactic magnetic fields, though this too must take place throughout awesome distances.
I hope to live long enough to see us gain a little more knowledge about the creation the Others have added to Creation. We may even, at last, find a way to make our findings comprehensible to the layman—or to ourselves.
(The professorial contenance glows) But no matter now. What matters above everything else today is that we have been given the chance for a fresh beginning!
NARRATOR
Before
Discoverer
returned home, the Voice offered to conduct her through the star gate and back. As Fernández-Dávila said afterward, “How could we not have accepted?”
(Views of a vessel which later traced the route, photographed from a companion ship. They are interspersed with simulations and animations, as well as pictures taken during the maiden venture. This and the narration make clear what happens. The spacecraft moves from sphere to sphere in a precise order.)
VOICE
The globes are simply markers, navigational aids. With their help, you can follow the exact path through the transport field which will bring you to the place prepared for you.
Have care! Any different path will take you to quite a different destination. It may well be that no machine exists there. You would
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