Last stop Eternal City Read online

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  by Claudio Elidoro

  Copyright 2013 Scienzainrete

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  Summary

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - A feeble glow in the dawn

  Chapter 2 - With tied hands

  Chapter 3 - Collision course!

  Chapter 4 - The circle narrows

  Chapter 5 - Target acquired

  Chapter 6 - The useless escape

  Chapter 7 - Finis est Romae

  Appendix 1 - Scenario “Metus”

  Appendix 2 - Illustrious precedents…

  Bibliography

  About the author...

  Introduction

  It’s not easy to discuss the topic of cosmic impact events. Not even if, to talk about it in a fascinating way, you decide to follow the paths of fantasy. There is always the lurking risk of getting carried away by an excessive trivialization or by the show’s sake. Often setting aside – or even ignoring – every possible connection with the physical reality and with the laws that rule it. It is a choice that we could even forgive to whom decided to set his story in a hypothetical world, which is, for some obscure reasons, relieved from putting up with the firm regulations of the laws of Physics. It is an absolutely deplorable choice, if, instead, you decide that the story, even though fantastic, must take place in the real world.

  It is all to obvious that, if you find yourself stuck with an heavy weight of strict rules that you have to obey, then this would inevitably clip your wings. Any fantasy flair is compulsorily forbidden even though they could surprise your reader by ensuring incredible turns in your story. It is as much undeniable that those annoying laws show you clearly the path that you have to undertake, but then it is your job to find a way to describe the events in a simple and effective way. Anything but trivial, therefore, it is to find the right alchemy between the scientific strictness, the simplicity of exposition and the exact dose of literary fantasy that makes the tale believable – because it is still a tale. In short, I think it is clear at this point how the hardest task in the writing of these pages was to search for the right doses in this delicate cocktail of science and fantasy. Not even such a popular theme like the one of impact events can enjoy any privilege. It is true, often successfull fictions did not care about physical laws and they have been appreciated by the great audience. Here, instead, I want to prove to take a more complicated road. Not as much on the events – almost trivial in their inevitable progression – but on the decision of telling the facts while relying on rigorous scientific studies. This is, maybe, a strange way of trying to do scientific divulgation.

  The scenario that I decided to hypotize is the one of an impact event upon a big metropolis of our days. And which city can evoke more charm and attract more attention than the Eternal City? It will be hypotized an impact on Rome. Nothing that is terribly big, nothing similar to the popular “dinosaurs impact”, so dear to literature and cinema. The bullet will be a small asteroid, a little bit bigger than fifty meters, identificated, almost by chance, at the very last minute, when there are just a few hours left to its appointment with the Earth. A circumstance not exceptional at all, since more than once we noticed an asteroid of this same size passing by near our planet when the cosmic rock was already moving away. Despite the small size of the bullet, however, the scenario that will open in front of our eyes will be frightfully destructive. The most dramatic aspect is that this scenario is not the result of fervid fantasies, but due to precise and accurate scientific analysis.

  In conclusion, let me offer my official apologies to everybody who, even though I haven’t had the pleasure to meet personally, I took the liberty of dragging in the game of the story without them knowing, flanking them with fictional characters. I kept the original names of some of them, for the others I arranged to hide their identity through simple enigmistic games. I trust that the great friendliness and kindness I always encountered between astronomers will come out in my favor.

  Have a good read.

  Claudio Elidoro

  Corte de' Frati, December 2017.

  This story has been published online in episodes on the web portal Scienzainrete (www.scienzainrete.it) as of July 21, 2014. The original pages are accessible at the link http://www.scienzainrete.it/capolinea-citta-eterna

  Many thanks to Scienzainrete for having granted the spread of this ebook.

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  [ back to Summary ]

  Chapter 1

  A feeble glow in the dawn

  Coonabarabran, New South Wales - 5:38 AM

  Work night for Simon Feestair. Truthfully he was officially on vacation, but since he was lucky enough to have a job that he liked, even the vacations ended up looking like work days most of the time. Since childhood Simon had been extremely fascinated by the cupolas of Siding Spring Observatory: they were situated a few kilometers away from his house and any time was a good time to ask his dad to take him there. Now, finally, he was working under those cupolas. He was an astronomer, but he dealt mostly with IT issues that were directly connected to the observation of the sky. In those months he was struggling with a new software that was supposed to improve the observations made for the SSS (Siding Spring Survey), the research project of new asteroids run in collaboration with Arizona University, to which the Observatory affiliated some years before Simon was hired. The general idea of the new software, that was appreciated even by who was working directly on the telescope commited to Survey a few nights for every month, was of to make as fast as possible the identification of a new celestial object. Taken the photo of a portion of sky, the software task was of identifying instantaneously all the bright points and comparing their positions with the ones in existing databases. A very common and widespread procedure, but Simon managed to make it by far more efficient and quicker by organizing the access to the databases with specific techniques borrowed from artificial intelligence programs.

  Before implementing the software on the Observatory computers, however, Simon not only wanted to be sure of the correct functioning and of the full compatibility, but he also wanted to enrich it with another gem. By resorting to innovative image processing techniques – Simon had been a digital image enthusiast since forever – he wanted to squeeze the maximum out of the photos of the sky taken by the telescope, by trying to catch the sight of the most feeble glow of a celestial body even though it was lost in the light and diffused brightness of the morning sky that announces the start of a new day. Delicate algorithms, with the solid risk of rough blunders – that’s truly the appropriate word – waiting behind the doorstep.

  By now the beta version was basically ready and Simon took some vacation days to prove it on his personal telescope. Coonabarabran, the town where he lived, was, so to speak, one of the access doors of Warrumbungle National Park, the wonderful natural park that was heavily destroyed by fires in 2013 [1] and was slowly taken back to its glory in the following years. Precisely on a high ground in the Park, with the help of other enthusiasts, Simon built a kind of private observatory. Nothing particularly showy: a simple shack with a
moving roof that hosted the base of his telescope and a series of batteries, kept in charge by an efficient photovoltaic installation, that guaranteed a whole day of electric autonomy. He brought from home the telescope, the computer and all the other gadgets for the observation when he decided to spend a few days by himself between the mountains and the sky. He did so even in those warm days of the second half of April, with the fall that was already starting to paint the leaves of the trees.

  Thanks to his computer knowledge and to his free access to the Observatory databases, Simon had transformed that shed in a detached office, from which we could run the most diverse tests on the software by feeding it with the images collected with his telescope. It was exactly while he was carrying out the tests at the beginning of summer that he noticed an insidious bug. To get to the bottom of it he had to work really hard and now – at least in theory – everything was supposed to be okay. Or at least so it seemed from all the observation sessions held until the night before. At the very early hours in the morning of that 21st of April, however, the software was signaling something strange.

  By now Simon was about to declare officially concluded even that last observation session: the data he collected in the previous nights and a first brief analysis were ready for the accurate control he would have done with Robert – his boss, a true Siding Spring institution – when he would have returned to the Observatory. At 5:30 A.M., therefore, the software was signaling that in the photo taken by the telescope there was an object that wasn’t inside the databases. This kind of thing had already happened to him, but he always had to verify, with a great sorrow, that it was a false alarm. Like that time when a small metereological ball made the software go crazy for a few hours by generating a series of absurde signals.

  The importance of Coonabarabran to Australian people that work with astronomy is wonderfully summarized on the welcome sign of the small town.

  That morning, however, the matter was really different. The telescope, in fact, was pointing a section of the sky towards the Pisces constellation, dimly brightened by the reflection of sunlight, it was exactly the target that the new algorithm of his software was aiming at. Automatically, as the program foresaw, the telescope pointed again the same area of the sky and captured a new image. After a few moments of processing, the pop-up on the screen was still signaling an unexpected presence, but this time it was also shown that the signal was part of the instrumental error limits – the caption that Simon chose to codify collections of data that deserved an additional accurate investigation.

  To get it over with, knowing that that night Robert booked the 2,3 meters ANU [2] telescope of the Observatory, Simon called him on his phone.

  «How is it going, Rob? I have a big favor to ask you. The software that I’m using, initially signaled me the presence of a new object in the Pisces constellation, but it seems to have lost it in a second check. Can you take a look at it?» «In the Pisces constellation, Simon? But in that area the sky is already lightening… Send me the coordinates and I see if I can find something. I’ll call you later.»

  Time seemed to stand still: Simon didn’t think that that “later” could last that long. While he was waiting, for a few times, he tried to point again the telescope on the trail of that evanescent object, but it had been useless. In the end, his software told him clearly to let it go: the conditions of the background sky – recited the pop-up – did not allow a reliable reading. The ringtone of the phone startled him.

  «Hello, Rob, so?»

  «So, the matter is rather complicated. I took two shots in sequence and I got conflicting answers. The routine software, then one we usually use in the Observatory, didn’t find anything. Then I tried to give my images to your software and in both shots it caught the same object. To be honest, however, in the second one it also gave me the signal of a possible processing error.»

  «It happened to me as well.» It wasn’t the right moment to explain Robert the meaning of the pop-up, he would have done it the day after. Now it was more important to understand what was going on.

  «Even admitting that it is a real object, it looks that its luminosity is weakening. What can that mean, Rob?»

  «It’s impossible to give the right explanation. It could be, for instance, an object of a very irregular shape. Its rotation could cause the reflected light, that allows us to locate it, to come from a smaller surface, or from a less reflecting region. But such a fast variation doesn’t sound right… Before making any assumption, anyway, it is fundamental to discover if it is something real and not an unfortunate trick of your new software. Let’s do it like this: I get in touch with a few other observers on the West that can wait for the potential intruder, you load up everything and join me at the Observatory. I believe that our observation night will have an unexpected line. We’ll see eachother in an hour and a half.» Even though he was young, Simon was not a newcomer. He caught that slight concern in the voice on the other side of the phone. In that affair there was something more, something that Rob didn’t want to tell him. Simon collected quickly his stuff, he loaded eveything on his jeep and closed the shed-observatory. He drank down the little coffee, now lukewarm, left in the thermos and headed towards Siding Spring.

  Notes

  [1] In January 2013 a very aggressive fire devasted the Park. About the 80% of the trees were destroyed, as well as dozens houses, including the Welcome Center and the Park Museum.

  [2] The ANU (Australian National University) Telescope is a reflector with a principal mirror of 2.3 meters, built in the first Eighties on the initiative of Don Mathewson, the Siding Spring Observatory director at the time. His construction was welcomed as the most innovative one of the time, since the project envisaged the use of a particularly thin mirror, the altazimuth mount and the collocation in a rotating building.

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  [ back to Summary ]

  Chapter 2

  With tied hands

  Siding Spring Observatory, New South Wales - 7:50 A.M.

  After leaving the car in the parking lot, Simon headed without hesitation towards the buildings that housed the Observatory offices. Through the glass window he thought he saw Rob anxiously talking on the phone, that made him worry even more. He was with Lisa Kewley, an astromer that he knew only by name and who, for what he knew, worked on star formation.

  «Here you are.» Robert said when he saw him. «Now sit down, grab a coffee and listen carefully what I am about to say to you. This morning when you sent me the coordinates I didn’t try just with the ANU. Your call reached me while I was talking to Lisa Kewley, she was on duty in the Observatory last night. She had just finished using the four meters AAT [1] to collect spectral data from a region of star formation, her field of study. She knew about our search for asteroids and she wanted to see the new software working. We took the first two shots with the ANU. Given the result, Lisa proposed me to try also with the AAT. We struggled a lot to convince the telescope control system that we didn’t mean to roast any CCD by pointing it towards the Sun, but in the end we succeeded.» «So?» Simon asked impatiently.

  « So, it looks like it’s a real object and not a software invention…»

  At that point Simon would have expected congratulations from Robert. Not only the software proved to work perfectly, but, some hours before, it had also allowed him to identify his first asteroid using only his personal equipment. A night that was worth a mark on his diary, like the time when he discovered his first object as a professional astronomer. His boss tone, however, seemed to show through a weird anxiety instead of a series of compliments. «What’s wrong?» Simon urged.

  View from the Australian Siding Spring Observatory where the dome that houses the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) stands out.

  «That, once I received the reply from AAT, I immediately contacted the Perth Observatory and when you got here I was on the phone with one of the volunteers who, in the nights when the Moon allows it, use the telescope for the follow-up [2] of asteroi
ds that were signaled from the Minor Planet Center [3]. Well, from a first hurried analysis of the measured positions in these two hours, it looks like we are in presence of a NEA [4].»

  «Well, it looks a great news to me. My first NEA as an amateur. Finally!» Simon was glowing. Then, seeing that on Robert’s face there wasn’t even the hint of a smile, he damped his enthusiasm and continued quietly. «Or there is something that doesn’t make this discovery so good?»

  «The fact is that this NEA is moving a bit too fast. We suspect that it may be particularly close to the Earth and, consequently, it may be dangerous. The problem is that it is travelling hidden in the sunlight halo, this made it a pretty difficult target to catch since we don’t actually know where to look for it. But the real pain is that, according to the data we collected this far, it seems to be heading towards the Earth. There are such few and close-up in time positions that it’s absolutely not the right time to send a warning. But I’m worried. A lot.»

  For a couple of minute – a true eternity – Robert’s office fell in an almost unreal silence. It was the first time that Simon had seen his boss in such conditions. Slowly, while he was thinking about what had happened in those few hours, he started to worry as well. In his studies he analysed a NEA scenario that ended his life by smacking into our planet, but here he wasn’t reading a book or studying a Science paper. «What do you suggest we do, Rob?» asked Simon quietly.