So, you want to travel faster than light? Prepare yourself for a wild ride! In this final blog on the science of When Morpheus Overslept, I will describe the method of superluminal travel called Bardolian Superluminal Drive. But first, a little history…
Graviton Drive (described in Part 2) naturally made scientists think about the logical next step—faster-than-light travel. In this era of human history, human beings were for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, fully in love with science and its full potential. The benefits of Graviton Drive were immediately obvious, and trips to other parts of the solar system began almost immediately. The first extraterrestrial lifeforms were discovered on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and on Venus, although these were extremophiles and single-celled organisms. Soon, the resources of the rocky bodies in asteroid belt were put to good use, and all mining and most industry was moved off the Earth. A permanent Mars station was established 2089, and the Lunar Beltline—a band of solar panels spanning the entirety of the Moon’s equator—was built in 2109. But the general mood of scientific thought in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries was to not wait.
The international agency, EX-HELIOS, dedicated to the discovery and colonization of habitable exoplanets, were planning a mission to TRAPPIST-1e when physicist wunderkind, Dr. Henry Sullivan developed his theory of Superluminal Space-Time Fracturing and Navigation with a team of physicists in 2117. The results were so exciting that attempts to prove it began immediately, and colonization efforts were temporarily delayed. After all, why travel there in 150 years with all the time dilation if you can do it in a few hours? The first superluminal test was conducted about 420,000 km from Jupiter, just inside the orbit of Io, and also accomplished the first practical tests of an idea that would also require centuries to fully realize: the Jupiter-Io Magnetosphere Plasma Engine. These first tests were disturbingly unsuccessful, producing odd temporal anomalies that lasted for several years, and the resulting rent in space-time did not fully heal for another twelve years, delaying full realization of the practical utilization of the Jupiter-Io plasma torus for almost 200 years.
Despite the humiliation amid this setback, Dr. Sullivan and his team quickly deduced that the frequencies of the electromagnetic fields cracking space-time required extraordinarily precise calibration, down to nearly 4 femtoseconds, and therefore they needed to collect data over a much larger span of the universe. This was just the kind of data a NISQA quantum computer could collect in a multi-lightyear journey at relativistic speeds, and the result was a quantum Space-Time Data Scoop. The EX-HELIOS manned mission to TRAPPIST-1e was revived, and this became the plot of When Morpheus Overslept. Haphazard as that mission turned out to be, the data collected over the next 156 years as the Morpheus spacecraft streaked through lightyears of space-time at roughly three-quarters the speed of light was sufficient to make Superluminal Drive a reality by the end of the 23rd century.
Bardolian Superluminal Drive
Developed by international cooperation and requiring generations of work, the final necessary technological advancements were completed by Dr. Pema Kelsang and a team of hundreds in the 2280s. Inspired by her Buddhist background, Dr. Kelsang named the new propulsion, Bardolian Superluminal Drive, in reference to the Bardo Thodol. Taken from the Buddhist religious text, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” Bardo meaning ‘The Inbetween’ in Tibetan was an appropriate designation considering that wormholes pass between the threads of space-time itself. Some scientists, however, still prefer to refer to it as Einstein-Rosen Superluminal Drive in respect for the physicists that predicted the possibility of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge in the first place. The first superluminal Earth ship, the I.S.C. Hawking, left for the Varda Prime colony (formerly TRAPPIST-1e) in 2297.
Using E4 nuclear fusion power, an exotic matter injection, and intense gravitational and electromagnetic fields, a fracture in space-time was possible, producing a navigational wormhole—a tunnel of sorts from one location in the universe to another. Precise coordinates need to be established first, and this generally means that the destination must have already been visited by the space-faring species—such coordinates can also be preemptively provided by another FTL space-faring species, and often such coordinates are highly valued and traded with zealous caution by the various alien species in the region.
Travel within wormholes is dizzying and confusing, requiring constant attention to navigation. Furthermore, it is not instantaneous, requiring approximately one hour per light year traveled. Poor navigation can slow this estimate, excellent navigation can speed it. Space hazards do exist, including a radiation that only exists in wormholes, dubbed Rosen’s Radiation by Earth scientists.
Navigation is accomplished by a cybernetic interphase process through a navigation station called a Superluminal Navigation Intermix Console (SNIC station). Navigators are sometime colloquially called ‘Snickers’ as a result. The navigator—who must be extremely adept at the recognition of the Astivian symbols (stay tuned for a future blog on this subject)—is fed several options through a visor which provides a heads-up display over a view of the space-time corridor. The stream of symbols represents several options that the computer has determined to be good maneuvers for avoiding a navigational hazard. The navigator picks what he or she intuitively feels is the best option. Intuition is key because the navigation can only be accomplished by a living quantum computer, i.e. a human mind. The ERICI computer pulls these options using quantum analysis (in much the same manner as a NISQA computer), and if it does its job well, none of the options will be disastrous. Some may be significantly problematic as to cause major delays, however.
Collision with the wormhole’s inner surface is a collision with compressed space-time, which will result in massive time dilation, literally thousands of times normal. Even a split second of touching the compressed space-time can add hours to travel time. (There is a rather long formula for determining the amount of time dilation in the collision with a compressed space-time tunnel, and it was worked out by Dr. Sullivan quite early on. This is one aspect of his theory which proved totally accurate.)
Although a wormhole can be theoretically opened almost anywhere, the process is limited by gravitational interference of other space phenomenon in the vicinity, such as massive stars, black holes, supernova fragments, and possibly especially large planets.
Finally, a network of permanent wormholes does exist, though the knowledge for creating these is unknown by any of the prominent alien races. This network was established at least tens of millennia ago—perhaps millions of years ago by some estimates—by a now legendary race called the Ainar. These wormholes, called ‘Ainar Gates’, are free of hazards, such as Rosen’s Radiation, and allow for transit in significantly shorter than the usual time. Navigation through these wormholes does not require a living navigator and can be handled by onboard ERICI computer control. Opening one of these wormholes requires transmission of a specific tones and semasiographic symbols. The Ainar Gates are completely invisible until activated and are scattered throughout the near areas of the galaxy. One must have specific coordinates in order to find them and then transmit the necessary codes at short range. The ultimate number of Ainar Gates is unknown, and it may be possible that further such gates will be discovered at a later time.
Due to the inherent limitations of Bardolian Superluminal Drive, efforts are underway to develop other means of superluminal travel, such as Dark Matter Drive or possibly a method similar to warp drive, though such technologies remain for the moment beyond the capability of the known races of the galaxy.
When Morpheus Overslept is due out on the 15th of February 2021. Pre-order the Kindle edition now at Amazon.com.
Yours in print,
—Michael