Latent Flaw by Andreas Karpf

Author:Andreas Karpf [Karpf, Andreas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

Part 5: The Hunt

Chapter 15

Jack stood next to Sarah, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window that stretched the length of their small room. The internal lights were off, giving them a near-perfect view of their hiding spot’s strange, dark beauty. The stars of the constellation Orion stood out against the innumerable background stars. Bright orange Betelgeuse in Orion’s shoulder competed against the almost equally dominant blue-white Rigel in the constellation’s knee. Despite their size, though, Jack’s eye was invariably drawn to the line of three white stars comprising Orion’s belt. It was a view he’d seen hundreds of times, but that wasn’t what captured his attention today. Instead of sitting against the inky blackness of space, the stars seemed to be set upon a faint iridescent tapestry. Subtle folds of orange, green and blue transformed into one another, almost as if they were slowly flowing waves of mist. The colors grew stronger as he turned to his left – the direction of the sun – and almost disappeared to his right. As if to compensate for the lack of color, his right-side view was dotted with ephemeral flashes of white. It was difficult not to think of them as tiny jewels sewn into some unseen fabric.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Sarah asked quietly.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Jack admitted.

“I’ve actually studied this phenomenon, you know.”

“Really? Probably a welcome relief from the dry mathematics of your specialty.”

“Hardly,” Sarah said with a laugh. “One might say that my work sucked the beauty out of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I published my results under the far-from-artistic title: a determination of particle size and dynamics from scattered light in Kordylewski clouds.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No…for real. But, it was actually very interesting. The gravitational wells of L4 and L5 act as basins, scooping up interplanetary dust and debris as they move with the Earth-Moon system,” Sarah said as she waved her arms, illustrating the process. “You end up with clouds of micron to millimeter size ice-coated dust and rubble. A Polish astronomer over a hundred fifty years ago claimed to be the first to spot them…but he didn’t live to see confirmation of his discovery. If only he could see this.”

Curiosity got the better of Jack when she didn’t continue. “So, what was your work about?”

“We basically used what you see here as a tool. On the sunward side, particles scatter the sunlight – the separation of the color bands tells you about their size. If you track the movement of the bands, they map out rather precisely the subtle twists in the gravitational fields in this environment.” She paused for a second before pointing to her right and saying, “Once you know the particle size distribution, you can use those flashes to tell you about how much ice is coating them.”

“OK, you’ve convinced me; you’re definitely more of a geek than me.”

Sarah laughed as she leaned against him before saying, “But, it’s amazing what you can learn from simple little phenomena like scattering.

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