Black Alert Cap Canaveral, January 13, 1993, 10:40AM Nicola=EFev Ankov is a physicist specialized in extreme cold temperature and its properties. He came to the United-States in 1989, at the time the USSR was falling apart. At first just invited to present the USSR advances in the field of extreme cold, he decided to stay as he was offered the technological means to conduct experiments aimed at reaching and maintaining extremely low temperature more easily and at a lower cost. One of the project of Nicola=EFev consisted in reaching the absolute zero, a temperature of less than -273.15 degree Celsius (-460=AAF). When submitted to such a temperature, molecules are supposed to freeze and, thus, become visible with the appropriate equipment. 1. Genesis Fifteen minutes before launching Nicola=EFev had designed such an equipment, a confinement chamber the size of a closet. Inside, a tiny sample of mercury was electromagnetically sustained in midair. A vacuum had been created to allow for a discontinuous flow of electrons to reach the sample at a proper speed and to bounce back to several detectors surrounding the sample. A computer would then infer a three-dimensional image from the pattern of reflection of the electrons. Competing with other laboratories in reaching the lowest temperature attainable, Nicola=EFev had just won the race. Forty-two hours ago, he had witnessed the first and only image of a frozen molecule of mercury. The screen had displayed a mess of particles that resembled spirals which ends met inside. They were grouped in packs around a nucleus out of focus. Supposing the computer programming was accurate, there should be 80 packs of spirals, the electrons, circling around a nucleus of other packs of spirals, the protons and neutrons. The arrangement of the spirals inside each neutron seemed to be consistent, confirming the fact that the three basic arrangements possible determine the electric charge of a particle. Nicola=EFev felt a wave of adrenaline building up along his spine, then exploding in a flash of climax inside his neurons, cutting his breath, blurring his vision, and providing an impression of extreme lightness. His pupils dilated, an expression of awesome satisfaction drawn on his face, his arms and legs trembling while a dribble of saliva poured out of his wide open mouth, Nicola=EFev was slowly recovering from the shock of his discovery, thinking at lightning speed of its consequences. He would soon be able to know everything about the essence of matter, probably even have the possibility of acting on matter to create new molecules or transform existing ones, the dream of middle-age alchemists finally alive. In the long run, he could feel the solution to all the problems of non-renewable resources and pollution, the possibility to solve all the mysteries of life, from gravity to the birth of the universe. Meanwhile, subsequent shots of the experiment were displayed on the screen, some of them reaching the practical part of Nicola=EFev unconscious. There, a process independent from Nicola=EFev's control but responsible for his successes in physics was attempting to analyze these images in a meaningful manner. Nicola=EFev's subconscious finally came up with a result. Consequently, another shock wave of adrenaline ran up his pine. But this time, an expression of terrible fear contracted the muscles on his face. 2. The Leviathan Ten minutes before launching. The first image taken a few seconds after the absolute zero was reached should have shown the usual surface of a mercury sample, a flat surface spread with what seems some kind of whirlpools. Instead, a tiny foggy nucleus had appeared while the packs of spirals were separating in a disorderly manner, still distinguishable although the shot of electrons should have excited them enough for the spirals to move again in revolutions around the nucleus. On the third shot, the nucleus had grown to fill two-third of the screen, while the remaining space was completed by a multitude of spirals seemingly stretching in lines bending toward the unknown fog-like phenomenon. The following shots just showed an ever brightening white cloud. At that time, two alarms went off on the microscope's control panel, confirming Nicola=EFev's fear. One was the temperature inside the confinement chamber, now reaching 350=AAK (170=AAF), and threatening to melt down the sensors. The second alarm reported a malfunction of the electron receptors surrounding the sample. There was now no doubt in Nicola=EFev's mind about what was going on. Inside the confinement, the sensors, receptors, and soon the walls, were breaking up into ever smaller pieces and running into the bright white mass. Nicola=EFev asked the computer to determine the rate at which the particles were swallowed. He entered the characteristics of the experimental chamber and computed a graph to determine when would the phenomenon have swallowed the entire chamber. The graph showed an asymptotic curve reaching its peak in a little less than 48 hours. Nicola=EFev shut off the machine and picked up the phone, tears forming on the outskirt of his eyes, and dialed a number only a very few scientists working on sensitive experiments knew of. 3. A Star is Born Five minutes to launching. Forty-two hours later, Nicola=EFev was standing in a bunker a few thousand feet away from a space launcher at Cap Canaveral. The ultimate solution, to send a phenomenon worth a Nobel prize that had quickly turned out to be a real Leviathan, had been decided after spending hours trying to find solutions to reverse the process. No convincing ones had been found, and a rocket originally scheduled to launch a Japanese telecommunication satellite had been diverted. The whole microscope confinement had been transported first to the launching pad, then included in the third stage of the rocket. One minute to go before take-off. Nicola=EFev could not help crying, his anxiety reaching inhumane levels, his jaws crisped, the surrounding of his eyes wrinkled by deep concentration and blackened by a lack of sleep, his face blank. Then, while the rocket started to head up in an explosion of light and fumes, Nicola=EFev's heart stopped when he saw the upper part of the rocket implode; he just had the time, in a last electrical storm bursting through his brain, to realize the fantastic power of his creation. It had eaten the walls of the confinement up to a point they weren't able to resist the vacuum anymore. Nicola=EFev fell on the floor, stroke down by a heart attack, the expression on his face reflecting stupor, horror and fascination at the same time. Meanwhile, the main propeller continued to climb up, progressively disappearing behind a kind of mask, the upper part of the rocket falling down at the same time, dragged by an invisible force. A purple halo barely visible stretched out in an ellipsoidal shape, while the launching tower began to disintegrate, its elements kind of liquefying as they approached the ellipse. 4. The Sun and the Star Paris, January 15, 1995, 4:15PM Peter, a student in medical school, doesn't feel well today. The prickling on his skin just kept getting worst since he got up. Now, it is as if an army of needles were plunged in and pulled out of his skin in turns. Peter finds ever harder to breathe the surrounding air, which is getting hot though it is winter. For over an hour, his nose has been bleeding. No doctor offices answered his calls, nor did any emergency services. A few hours ago, just before the TV channels and radio stations were filled up with parasites, Peter had listened to the explanations of a famous physicist as to why an experiment that had gone wrong was threatening humanity. The scientist had begun his expos=E9 with an analogy to the first nuclear experiments. At that time, nobody had an idea of what exactly would happen after a nuclear explosion. In fact, some believed that a permanent sun would be created, that would progressively consume earth matter. No sun had ever appeared. The experiments attached to the attainment of extreme cold temperature had similarly raised gossips about the consequences. Some had even imagined the creation of a black hole, a special kind of star. Only this time, fantasy became real. 5. A Lesson of Physics. Paris, 4:25PM A black hole is a theory, probably now a reality. The existence of black holes were first suggested by astronomers to explain regions of space that were dark: regions that seemed to have no stars. Astronomers quickly suggested that an invisible phenomenon kept remote galaxies from being visible by absorbing the light they emitted. The genesis of a black hole is as mysterious as the birth of the universe. But its effects are well agreed on. A black hole acts as a kind of magnet the size of a pin nonetheless capable of attracting any kind of particles, including light particles, in an ever increasing range the size of our galaxy. Although the mass and quantity of matter absorbed may be equivalent to thousands of times the earth, the diameter of a black hole may be as little as a few centimeters. How is that possible? Simple: just imagine a molecule which neutrons would be of human size. A neutron would be separated from the nucleus by over a mile. A black hole just doesn't have any trouble making neutrons fall on nucleus--movements, attractions and repulsion being somehow neutralized--until the day the black hole either explodes or expands into another dimension, creating a new universe. As when a gas being compressed release energy, a black hole releases heat around its edge. At a certain point, the temperature is so high that particles of matter circling around it, like satellites around a planet, melt into a plasma substance generating light because of a ionization process, where the lack of electrons causes the plasma to emit light. This variation of a black hole is called a quasar. 6. A Minute to Eternity. Paris, 4:30PM Peter lights his last cigarette, that he holds in hand swallowed and reddish. He breathes the smoke, concentrating on the taste of each particle of tar and nicotine that tickle his tongue, his palate, his lungs. Being thirsty, he goes for the refrigerator and opens it, only to discover that all the bottles stored have exploded under the depressurization. His head pounding, his muscles aching, he heads back to his room by the window. He can hear the sound, like the humming of billions of insects flying toward him. He can see the curtain of lightning, a bright series of flash encompassing his sight and closing on him at incredible speed. Behind the curtain, Peter distinguishes a kind of cloud of dust progressively absorbed into a dark void. In between the curtain of lightning and the void, the whole palette of colors are displayed, from those with the lowest wavelength on the edge (reds) to those with the highest wavelength on the inside (purples). The humming is so intense now that Peter can feel the building and even his own body shaking. The curtain is very close now; a flash, a shock, black spots altering Peter's vision, and it is gone. Silence prevails and darkness invades. The cigarette smoke seems sucked out through the window. Peter can feel this draft, first around him, then from the inside, a stream of matter yet invisible that burst through him and out of him. 7. Dimensions Paris, 4:31PM Peter cannot see anymore, just darkening sparkles of dying electric signals along his optic nerves. But he still can feel. He can feel his life expanding from his ears, his mouth, his nose, forming from his pores, soaking his clothes. In the far end across the window, the buildings seem to stretch in a parabolic manner, ending in a cloud of dust dragged into the void. A white aura surrounds Peter's window, that stretches out in waves of various intensity, giving the impression of multiple layers being ripped off at an increasing pace. Peter's last feeling is that of a free fall, while his body stretches in diagonal across the remains of the window, the dispersing molecules seemingly forming a grotesque human-shaped balloon, blue lightning bolts going through. Space, 3,540,765,000 years and a few seconds later A whole bunch of anti-matter particles encounter the black holes. Inside the void, what remain of Peter suddenly expand at a lightning speed in an ever expanding new universe. Some of Peter's particles will organize in essential conglomerates that used to be known as neutrons, protons and electrons. In a few other billion years, an intelligent life form may eventually appear.