Nina, Jenny,
Walker, and Charlie sat at the conference table. The projector, which had at
first displayed the galactic map with positions of the stuck nanosats—there
were fifteen, total, in different parts of the galaxy—now displayed a picture
of the Incredible Hulk punching the shockwave of a supernova, which somehow
worked and saved the spaceship he was standing on.
“See,
because the Hulk is powered by gamma rays,” Walker was saying, “the supernova’s
gamma rays actually served to power him up way beyond normal, so he—”
“Enough! I
concede the point,” Charlie through up his hands.
Jen
half-dozed, half-ate a slice of cold pizza. Half a dozen pizza boxes formed the
basis for the fort Nina had constructed for herself to avoid confronting the
data again.
“Come on,
guys, let’s focus,” Charlie said.
“Can’t make
me,” Nina said from her fort.
“Shleepy,”
Jenny muttered.
“Give it a
rest, Charlie, we’ve been here all day and night. We’ve got nothing left. For
all we can tell, the satellites just stopped in place. Like I said before,
their sails got ripped off.”
“But it
didn’t happen with any of the other thousand nanosats we have out there. Why
would it happen to these? Plus, they’re not stopped. They’re still moving, just
not nearly as quickly.”
“They
shtopped, we din’t,” Jenny said, her pizza slice dropping from her hand onto
the plate.
Nina lifted
the pizza box on top of her fort a little to peer at Jenny. “Say that again.”
“Hmm? Wha?”
“They
stopped—” Charlie began
“We
didn’t,” Walker finished. Walker leaned in and kissed Jenny full on the mouth.
“Mmmh!”
Jenny’s eyes opened wide, then softened as she leaned into the kiss.
Charlie
grabbed the laptop controlling the projector, flipping it back to the map with
the data tables. “Okay, our solar system is revolving around the galactic
center at. . . .”
“About 230
km/s,” Nina said, breaking out of her fort Hulk style.
“Okay, and
the speed of the galaxy through the universe is about 600 km/s.”
“We’re also
moving through the local group at 100 km/s. So why are the nanosats, all of
them! Going approximately 190 km/s?”
“Well, we
know they’re not caught in eddies like these others,” he gestured at three
groups on the map. “They just keep spinning around in a loop twice the size of
our solar system. So they must have hit something. That completely prevents the
dark energy from filling their sails.
“But they
didn’t vaporize!” Walker exclaimed breaking the kiss with Jenny. “Any impact
with matter at that speed would vaporize the nanosat, and probably a good chunk
of whatever rogue planet it hit, too.”
“What if it
wasn’t normal matter?” Jenny said, her eyes alert, and her smile lopsided.
Everyone
looked at her, then at each other, then at the map.
“Dark
matter?” Charlie ventured.
“If the
sails can interact with dark energy, can they also interact with dark matter?”
Nina said.
“Weakly,
otherwise it would have vaporized. Instead it must have been like jelly,
absorbing and slowing the impact, then trapping the satellite.” Walker mimed
the effect.
“Like a
ship running aground on a sandbar,” Jen smiled.
“The dark
matter is gravitationally bound to the galaxy, but weakly, and probably moving
at a different rate through the galaxy, which is why the relative speed is
different.” Nina pointed to the spots on the map.
“How do we
prove it, weather girl?” Charlie smirked, nodding to Nina standing next to the
screen.
Nina looked
darkly at him.
Jenny, though pulled out her phone,
speed dialing.
“Tyson Deep
space Array Control,” said a man on the other end.
“This is Dr.
Jennifer Nichols. I need time on the array. This is a priority.”
“A
priority? In astrophysics? Sorry, Dr. Nichols, you’ll have to submit your
request like anyone else. It’s a big sky, and a lot of people want to look at
it.”
Jenny ended
the call.
“Go through
Jim. He’ll get us the time,” Walker smiled at her.
Jenny
nodded, then dialed Jim Macomber.
“We
shouldn’t need much time. Just some pictures so we can see what kind of lensing
effect is in this region. That’ll be confirmation enough.”