Gravitational Physics

Gravitational Physics

They were deep in the arcane of gravitational physics – twisters, renormalization of ghost propagators, time-like Killing vectors, non-Abelian gauge invariance, geodesic refocusing, eleven-dimensional Kaluza-Klein treatments of supergravity, and, of course, superunification.

The walls of the tunnel were undulating, closing in on the dodecahedron, squeezing it forward. A nice rhythm was being established. Every time the dodec would slow almost to a halt, it was given another squeeze by the walls. In some places it was tough going, the walls working hard, waves of contraction and expansion rippling down the tunnel. Elsewhere, especially on the straightways, they would fairly skip along.

A great distance away, Elie made out a dim point of light, slowly growing in intensity. A blue-white radiance began flooding the inside of the dodecahedron. She could see it glint off the black erbium cylinders, now almost stationary. The swelling brilliance ahead was striking and they were rushing toward it, shooting up the tunnel, and then erupting into what seemed to be ordinary space.

Something about gravitational physics is bothering me: If you are limited by the speed of light, it is difficult to hold a galactic empire together. Image : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Before them was a huge blue-white sun, disconcertingly close. Elie knew in an instant it was Vega.

As she peered through the lens more closely, she thought she could see faint erratic flashes of light from its very center. Hawking radiation? No, its wavelength would be much too long. Or light from the planet Earth still rushing down the tube?

Planets. Where were the planets? She scanned the ring plane with the long-focal length lens, searching for embedded planets – or at least for the home of the beings who had broadcast the Message. In each break in the rings she looked for a shepherding world whose gravitational influence had cleared the lanes of dust. But she could find nothing.