Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

“Up until a few days ago, we all imagined such an asteroid impact to be the worst possible catastrophe that could befall humanity, or the Earth. Now we know better.

“We as a race have often imagined that we knew the worst that could befall us—and time after time we have found something worse that could happen. Famine, flood, ecologic disaster, nuclear winter, asteroidal impact. Every time, a new worst has supplanted the old, imagined worst. Can we now be sure the worst is behind us?”

There was silence around the table.

“I call upon Mr. Chao to open the substantive discussion.”

Larry Chao wondered whether to stand up or not, and decided not to; he felt exposed enough just sitting there. He had never even been to the Moon before. What the hell was he doing here now, addressing all these big shots? Had it really been worth all the money and effort to get him here so fast just so he could talk?

The hell with it. Larry squared his shoulders and launched into his talk, hoping to get it over with as soon as possible. “Ah, thank you once again, Chancellor, and, ah, members of the joint committee.” He wasn’t even quite sure if that was what this group should be called.

He pulled some notes from his pocket and shuffled through them without comprehension, trying to stall long enough to order his thoughts. “Let me start by settling the first and foremost issue before the group: Is the black hole now where Earth once was actually the Earth? Did our—did my —experiment somehow cause Earth to be crushed down into nothingness?” There, I’ve said it , he thought. His heart was pounding in his chest. There was a slight rustle around the table as Larry confessed his own part in the disaster.

Yes, I was the one who did it , he thought. I admit it . He knew he had no choice in the matter but to accept the facts. He could never hide from what had happened, from what he had done. He was going to travel under a cloud for the rest of his days. Pretending it wasn’t there would not improve the situation.

Sondra sat next to him, watching her friend. Even through his nervousness, she could see that he had grown, changed, matured in these past days. As he spoke, he sat up a little straighter, returned the gaze of his audience with a bit more confidence. The shy half-child was not yet gone, but there was much more of the adult about him, too.

Larry went on. “During our journey in from Pluto, I was in constant contact with the Orbital Traffic Control Center here on the Moon. As you all no doubt know, that facility came up with excellent data on the situation here in the Earth-Moon system—or perhaps calling it Lunar space might make more sense now.” Again, a small stir in the audience. “Lucian Dreyfuss of OTC has collated the OTC information on the black hole. Both he and I have analyzed that data and come to the same conclusions.”

Larry saw Lucian at the far end of the table, returning Larry’s gaze evenly, doing nothing to signal agreement or disagreement. Larry found himself forced to admire Lucian’s cool.

“We modeled what Earth would look like as a black hole, and compared it to what we can measure of the black hole that is now sitting where Earth used to be.”

Warming to his subject, Larry forgot his shyness. “The trouble is, very few properties of a black hole can be measured. In many senses, a black hole isn’t there at all. It has no size, no color, no spectrum. Its density is infinite. But there are certain things we can get readings on. First and most obvious is the hole’s mass. The first thing we knew about the hole was how much it weighed.

“You will also recall that it weighed five percent more than Earth. That may not sound like much, but bear in mind, the Moon only has one-point-two percent of the Earth’s mass. And remember, the black hole’s mass was measured only eight hours after Earth vanished. It could not have accumulated that much more mass that quickly. For the Earthpoint black hole to be Earth, it would have to be removed, compressed down into a singularity, fed the equivalent of four Moon masses, and then returned to its starting point, all in eight hours. To my mind that makes it all but impossible that the black hole truly is the Earth.”

Larry found himself remembering his days as a teaching assistant. He had always enjoyed lecturing. “Now I’ve got to jump into some slightly complicated areas. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to be something less than a purist about my nomenclature. Forgive me if I oversimplify a bit, but I won’t hand out any wrong data, just make it a bit easier to follow.

“There are a few things we can measure in a black hole: spin attributes; electric charge and magnetic field, if any; event horizon; mass; and of course the strength of the gravity field itself. These are not independent variables, of course. For example, the magnetic field, or lack of it, depends on both the electrical charge of the hole, and on its spin.

“We can measure spin, charge, and the magnetic field effects—and they can tell us useful things. Let me start with spin. We can get a reading on the hole’s rotation from the movement of its magnetic fields, and from what is called the optical scalar technique. The black hole’s axis of spin is precisely ninety degrees from the plane of its orbit. As you know, Earth’s axis is canted 23.5 degrees from its orbital plane. It would require tremendous energy to move Earth’s axis into the vertical and then hold it there. The planet would resist the motion, the way a gyroscope resists any effort to change its axis of spin. I doubt that you could force Earth toward the vertical without cracking the planetary crust and flinging large amounts of debris into space. We did not see that debris.

“But that is only the first point concerning spin. In order to conserve momentum, an object must spin faster if it gets smaller, the way a skater in a pirouette spins faster and faster as he draws his arms in toward his body.

“If you crush Earth into a black hole, the resultant hole would have to spin at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed. This hole is rotating far too slowly for it to be Earth. It is only rotating at about one percent of the velocity that an Earth-derived hole would turn. I might add that it is also spinning in the wrong direction.

“This black hole also exhibits a massive negative electric charge. Earth was—is—electrically neutral. Another point: the north and south magnetic poles of the hole are reversed.

“In mass, spin data, electric charge and magnetic properties—in every way that we can measure—this black hole is drastically different from what the Earth would be like if the Earth were made into a black hole.

“For all these reasons, I feel confident that this black hole is not the Earth.”

A murmur of relief whispered about the room. Larry let it die down before he went on. “What then has happened to Earth? Earth is either somewhere else, or has been destroyed. If it has been destroyed, where was the rubble it should have left behind, the debris? Where was the energy pulse? If the Earth had been smashed to rubble, or blown up, or disintegrated into elementary particles or pure energy, we would know about it—if we survived the event. There would be nothing subtle about the effects. The Moon would have been pelted with a massive amount of debris or roasted in the energy release, or both.

“I believe that the Earth has been transported to another place, and was not destroyed.”

“Now hold on a minute!” A strident voice broke in from halfway down the table. “There is not the slightest bit of information in the data to support that claim. I know! I gathered most of the data myself.” It was McGillicutty, sputtering mad. “I didn’t watch your precious black hole close up. But you’ve just made the high-and-mighty argument that no technology could wreck a planet without a trace—but then you go and say, casual as you please, that it’s possible to steal a planet without any fuss? What technology makes that possible?”