Icarus at the Edge of Time [1 ed.] 9780307268884

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Icarus at the Edge of Time
A Note on the Science
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s •

^Bt

BRIAN GREENE LEGANT UNIVERS

As the starship Proxima hurtled through space, Icarus looked longingly at the distant stars.

It

was the only view he knew.

It

was

meant to be the only view he'd ever know. He had been born'on the Proxima, as had

his father

and

his father's father.

The Proxima was on

a

unique quest.

Astronomers had picked up faint radio signals from

much

like

Earth that was orbiting Proxima Centauri

to the Sun.

— the

a planet

star closest

Once deciphered, the radio communications confirmed

what many had long thought

— we

are not alone in the cosmos.

Iffllfrt

Wild

excitement

and

unprecedented

global

scientific

cooperation followed, with the world's nations combining their resources and expertise to launch a human expedition to the stars

—a

rendezvous with the

first

life

discovered

beyond

Earth's shores. Icarus's great-grandfather was chosen to lead the mission.

Icarus had just turned fourteen.

Only recently had he grasped that not only had he been born on the Proxima, he

\

•

wOuld eventually

die there.

There were others on board

like

took many families to provide

him.

It

the

next

generation

that

would

replace an aging crew and start the cycle

anew. Yet,

as

most everyone

had come to realize, Icarus was ferent.

Not

only

had

he

schoolwork way beyond

become

mastered

his years

youngest

the

dif-

and

and

most

accomplished

pilot of the

fleet of agile

Runabouts, but he had

palpable

ond the

yearning life

he'd

ftr

Hen

Proxima's

something handed.

Suddenly

Icarus

heard

the

Proxima's captain.

"Everyone, immediately to your stations," the

captain bellowed over

the ship's loudspeakers.

"We

are

mak-

emergency course diversion

ing an

to

avoid an uncharted black hole."

"Wow,"

thought

Icarus.

"A

black hole. A real black hole." Icarus quickly joined his father at their

visibly

adjacent consoles, but he was frustrated.

"The Proxima has

been hurtling through space for nearly a

hundred years.

come and

upon

And now,

something

we

spectacular

unexpected and we're not even

going to try to explore it?"

v

finally,

His father lust so

of the

thought looming

knew it

well Icarus's wander-

best to simply remind him

peril of a black hole.

black hole's gravitational pull that were we to fall

in

is

so

"Son,

a

enormous

we'd never get out."

"Yes, of course," Icarus shot back. "I

know

that.

close

there

with

my new design

But so long as we don't get too shouldn't

be for

any the

danger.

And

Runabout's

micro-warp drives, I'm pretty sure that

a

good pilot would be able to pull away even after grazing a black hole's surface."

-

I

•

u design

s

father smiled. "Your new engine

is

very clever, and

the prototype

if

continues to hold up under careful testing, it

may one day transform space

that day

is

far off.

You and

I

travel. But

and everyone

on board this ship have one mission, and

we must devote everything cess.

We

There

will be no black-hole

to

its

suc-

can't take unnecessary chances.

grazing for us."

"Really?" Icarus thought.

I to

Here was his chance to be someone be

more than just

a

link

in

a

chain

stretching from an Earth he'd never walked to an alien planet he'd never see.

No one

in

history had ever explored a black hole. No

one had even gone near one. Icarus quickly turned the calculations he'd used to create his

new engine over and over

in

his

mind,

checking and rechecking the figures, and he definitively concluded that his redesigned

Runabout could triumph over the powerful pull of a black hole.

"My

poor Icarus," his fat

murmured thing

gravely.

thoughts,

"Since every-

even

slowing,

is it

seem

will

passing just as

it

I

like

your time

is

always does. You

won't even notice what's happening

to

you." As his father anx-

iously looked on, Icarus's movements

slowed

the

to

where

point

he

appeared almost frozen. from the

His father turned

telescope.

away,

His

and

he

son

was slipping

couldn't

bear

to

watch anymore.

On Icarus was

board in

the

Runabout,

high gear. His hands

raced across the console, adjusting here, fiddling there. He'd just

sured the black hole's mass so he

knew precisely how

could safely venture.

close

he

Hi 14 I

i

And

so on he went,

\f'

There w

wm

+

#

1

He hailed the Proxima again. No answer.

"Could the black

ho'le

have disrupted

the radio?" he wondered. But he couldn't

think of any reason why that would happen.

As he approached the location where he'd

left

the

Proxinja,

Icarus

believe what he was seeing.

couldn't

Hundreds starships

of

a

of

enormous,

design

luminous

never seen

he'd

were rushing along what appeared to be an interstellar highway.

"What

in

the world

.

is

»

going on?"

Icarus asked himself, slowly and quietly, patrol ship, larger and even ising

more

than the others, approached his

Runabout and signaled him

to dock.

•

Icarus was ushered into an enormous complex, filled

with gleaming

equipment aglow with

activity,

whose functions he couldn't even imagine.

"Welcome. But where, may

I

ask, did you get

that?" the patrol captain said, pointing across the

observation

M fpkt

'

i

deck to Icarus's

docked

Runabout.

sensors indicate that model hasn't been used

at least five,

maybe even

in

ten thousand years."

"What?"

"What

replied Icarus.

do you mean?" His face tightened. "It's

believe

it

real

a

Hard

beauty.

to

could be restored to working

order," the patrol captain continued.

"But

I

don't understand," Icarus

said. "I only just left the

Proxima an

hour ago and there were certainly no other

ships

in

the

area.

How

could

V

there' have

been?

We

are the first."

"The Proxima?" the patrol captain said, her eyes squinting. "This

the

Proxima Interstellar

named

after

is

Causeway,

the. pioneering

Proxima

starship that first traveled this route

thousands of years ago. ou mean?

Is that

what

And then

in a

flash

it

hit

him. Icarus

understood what had happened. "Gravity and time, gravity and time," he

over

said

and- over,

almost

buckling

under the weight of what had suddenly

become

clear.

"J didn't take account of gravity and time.

U

I

)••:

:•

.

kr-M

"We've been instructed you

take

to

Command

to

Central," the captain said. "It will

take

allow

my

few Earth hours, so

a

officer to escort you

to our library."

There tered

a

hovering It

encoun-

Icarus

gigantic a

in

panel

glass

cavernous

hall.

was an electronic repository

containing

all

of the galaxy's

information.

rapt

->

•i%

fc.

V,

"It's

bit

a

intimidatX

ing

at

first,"

the

Hi

i

\

ship's

(

c

vt-

\»-

librarian said gently to Icarus.

"But I've been told

of

your &

situation, so of

I

took the liberty

programming

tour that

I

a

personal

think will be suited

to your interests." Icarus put

on the visor she handed him.

•

*

.v.

wr

As

presentation,

learned

^v

watched

the

stunned,

he

Icarus

about the

successful journey,

Proxima's

conclusion

some

ten

of

its

thousand

years earlier, and the grand and fruitful era of interstellar coop-

wag eration that' followed.

He read

,

about the formation of a galac-

r

.

t

tic

government and Earth's

as

the

galactic

court,

role

settling

•»

J

disputes and ensuring a lasting

peace.

7

And he read about the

»

extraordinary discoveries favorite

fields

cosmology.

i%

of

in

physics

his

and

And then he learned

of a

legend that par-

ents had been telling their children for thou-

sands of years. A cautionary tale that had been passed down from generation to generation.

It

told of a boy, who, despite his father's warning,

flew a small ship close to a black hole

who, as legend had

it,

—a

boy,

was never seen again.

THE END

To

my son, Alec, and the memory with

a

of

my father, Alan

love that transcends all time.

by Brian Greene Art Direction and Design by Chip Kidd

All

images courtesy

of

NASA and

the

Hubble Space Telescope

The Orion Nebula

is

among the

closest active star-forming regions.

Known

as

NGC 1672,

shaped galaxy

black hole

The Bug Nebula comprises two lobes emitted from an extraordinarily hot dying star.

A cluster of galaxies that may provide evidence for a ring of

Known

as

A close-up

this "bar-spiral

M82,

in its

The Swan Nebula is mostly hydrogen gas intensely illuminated by nearby stars.

this galaxy likely

more than 500 times that

The Cone Nebula

is a

of

Nebula

newly formed stars.

center.

harbors a black hole with

of the Orion

reveals bursts of gas surrounding

likely harbors a giant

mass the Sun

a

The remains of a supernova 50 times the mass of the Sun.

region of

intense star formation.

dark matter.

The Sombrero Galaxy likely has a central supermassive black hole with a mass a billion times that of the Sun.

The Lagoon Nebula has two huge funnels of gas that may be cosmic tornadoes.

The Eagle Nebula lies in a neighboring arm of our Milky Way Galaxy and

spiral is

a

region of active star formation.

(ft

SSL/ as

M81,

IH

this galaxy likely

s ,

jf

A star that suddenly became more

70 million

than half a million times brighter than the Sun, vibrantly illuminat-

Sun.

ing shells of surrounding dust.

*Sifj»ermassive black ijje

Earth as seen from space.

NOTE ON THE SCIENCE

A

Black holes are regions of space

with such intense

filled

gravity that anything which gets too close, even light,

is

unable to

escape. Although Albert Einstein's insights led to the

modern

idea of black holes, he remained skeptical about their existence.

decades since, a wealth of astronomical observations

Yet, in the

have provided strong evidence that black holes not only exist

in

the cosmos, they're commonplace.

Black holes have a profound effect on time: their gravitational force pulls on time itself, slowing

rate of passage

its

ever more as one gets ever nearer a black hole's edge. Because of this, black holes provide for a specific kind of time travel.

Were you

to

hover near the edge of a black hole, time for you

would pass more slowly than

who remained

for everyone else

far

away. On returning to Earth you would thus find that hundreds or even thousands of years had elapsed, depending on the size of

the black hole and Scientists

how

close you ventured to

is

proposed that definitive

Some have

where time comes it's

answer

a portal

remaining challenges

in

to an

suggested that a black

end while others have

another universe. Finding the

to

widely

is

edge.

haven't figured out what happens at the

still

very center of a black hole. hole's center

its

recognized

one of the great

as

our continuing quest to understand

space, time, and the cosmos.

www.icarusattheedgeoftime.com

BRIAN GREENE

is

the author of The Elegant Universe, a finalist for

the Pulitzer Prize, and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

He

is

a professor of

mathematics and physics at Columbia University.

CHIP KIDD the

2007

has been designing books and book jackets since 1986.

recipient of the National Design

Award

for

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED Copyright Illustrations copyright All rights reserved.

Published

in

© 2008

© 2008

KNOPF

A.

by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of

of

is

by Brian Greene

Random House,

the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of

Canada by Random House

He

Communications.

Inc.

Random House,

Inc.,

Canada, Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greene, B. (Brian), [date] Icarus at the edge of time

/

by Brian Greene.

ISBN 978-0-307-26888-4 1.

Icarus (Greek mythology)

— 1st

(alk. paper)

— Fiction. 2. Interstellar

travel

PS3607.R45256I25 2008 813'.6— dc22

2007038860

Manufactured

First

ed.

in

China

Edition

— Fiction.

I.

Title.

New

York, and in

U. S. A.

$19.95

Canada S22.95

ICARUS AT THE EDGE OF TIME reimagining

the

of

time, rather than

near

space

the

and

Sun,

a

classic

challenges

a futuristic

Greek myth. This

wax wings and boy

is

ventures

a

journey too

through

deep

awesome power

the

of

black holes. The fable dramatizes the startling

implications

of

what

perhaps

is

Einstein's

greatest insight.

— Brian

Greene

ISBN 978-0-307-26888-4

SCIENCE 5

9

19

9 5

'780307' 268884 l

KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK www.aaknopf.com