Beyond Eternity by Phillip P Peterson

Author:Phillip P Peterson [Peterson, Phillip P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

“Twenty seconds,” said Grace. She took a quick look out the bridge windows and then lowered her head again to view her console. She had begun the countdown ten minutes earlier and had been announcing the time ever since. It was driving Ed crazy—they all had the numbers on their monitors already.

“Ten seconds,” Grace announced. Ed opened his mouth to make a sarcastic comment, but held himself in check in the last second. He stared silently at his monitor.

“Five … four … three … two … one … now!”

Ed had a hard time feeling excited. The moment was too abstract, and it wasn’t like it had any concrete effect on their flight. There was just one thing Ed was interested in. “David?”

“Yes, confirmed. We’ve gone exactly forty-five billion light-years. We have reached our first destination.”

“Can you believe it?” Grace asked. It was obvious from her voice that she didn’t. “We’re at the edge of the universe.”

“The edge of the observable universe as seen from Earth,” Einstein corrected. He was back in his seat next to David. Ed had barely seen him the past couple of days. Not that Ed had missed him, but he would like to know what he did in that tiny module all day.

“I have something for you,” the Nobel Prize winner said. “Ed?”

Ed turned around. Einstein held up a bag filled with a yellow liquid. Ed took it and looked at it skeptically. “What is it?”

“Champagne,” Einstein answered, pushing a second bag in Grace’s direction. She grabbed it as soon as it had floated close enough. “Champagne?” she echoed in amazement.

“Exactly. I thought we should celebrate this moment in style.” Einstein also gave a bag to David and to Wendy and pulled a final one for himself out of the rucksack he had attached to his seat.

Ed shrugged, pulled the tab open and sucked on the straw. The bubbly tasted sweet and flat. But of course Einstein knew that carbonation would give them gas in zero G.

“I have something to show you,” David said. “SharinHold on, I’m sharing a telescope image with your monitors.”

A pattern of red and blue dots appeared on Ed’s screen. It looked a little like a work by some modern artist who had randomly thrown paint onto canvas. “And what is that supposed to be?”

“That’s a look back at where we came from. In the microwave range.”

“That’s the cosmic microwave background, isn’t it?” Grace asked.

“Yes, we took images like this from Earth, too. They’re the earliest images of the cosmos that we have. It’s the first light of the universe, from about three hundred and eighty thousand years after the Big Bang, when space became opaque.”

“And what’s so interesting about it?” Ed asked.

“It’s also the light that’s farthest away from us. An image of the cosmic microwave background is an image of the margins of the visible universe.”

“Where we are now,” Wendy concluded.

“Exactly,” David said. “This image, taken from here, is interesting for two reasons.”

“Being?” Ed asked.

“For one, it’s no different from the one taken from Earth, even though from here we can see further.

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