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I climb the rest of the way into the room and settle into the chair. It’s comfortable, kind of a bucket seat.
“Pilot detected,” the computer says. “Angular anomaly.”
Pilot. Okay.
“Where is the anomaly?” I ask.
“Angular anomaly.”
HAL 9000 this computer is not. I look around at the many screens for a clue. The chair swivels easily, which is nice in this 360-degree computer pit. I spot one screen with a blinking red border. I lean in to get a better look.
ANGULAR ANOMALY: RELATIVE MOTION ERROR
PREDICTED VELOCITY: 11,423 KPS
MEASURED VELOCITY: 11,872 KPS
STATUS: AUTO-CORRECTING TRAJECTORY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.
Well. That means nothing to me. Except “kps.” That might mean “kilometers per second.”
Above the text is a picture of the sun. It’s jiggling around slightly. Maybe it’s a video? Like a live feed? Or is that just my imagination? On a hunch, I touch the screen with two fingers and drag them apart.
Sure enough, the image zooms in. Just like using a smartphone. There are a couple of sunspots on the left side of the image. I zoom in on those until they fill the screen. The image remains amazingly clear. It’s either an extremely high-resolution photo or an extremely high-resolution solar telescope.
I estimate the cluster of sunspots is about 1 percent the width of the disc. Pretty normal for sunspots. That means I’m now looking at half a degree of the sun’s circumference (very rough math here). The sun rotates about once per twenty-five days (science teachers know this sort of thing). So it should take an hour for the spots to move off the screen. I’ll check back later and see if they have. If so, it’s a live image. If not, it’s a picture.
Hmm…11,872 kilometers per second.
Velocity is relative. It doesn’t make any sense unless you are comparing two objects. A car on the freeway might be going 70 miles per hour compared to theground, but compared to the car next to it, it’s moving almost 0. So what is that “measured velocity” measuring the velocity of? I think I know.
I’m in a spaceship, right? I have to be. So that value is probably my velocity. But compared to what? Judging by the big ol’ picture of the sun over the text, I’m guessing it’s the sun. So I’m going 11,872 kilometers per second with respect to the sun.
I catch a flicker from the text below. Did something change?
ANGULAR ANOMALY: RELATIVE MOTION ERROR
PREDICTED VELOCITY: 11,422 KPS
MEASURED VELOCITY: 11,871 KPS
STATUS: AUTO-CORRECTING TRAJECTORY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.
Those numbers are different! They both went down by one. Oh wow. Hang on. I pull the stopwatch from my toga (the best ancient Greek philosophers always carried stopwatches in their togas). Then I stare at the screen for what seems like an eternity. Just before I’m about to give up, the numbers both drop by one again. I start the timer.
This time, I’m ready for how long the wait will be. Again, it seems interminable, but I stand firm. Finally, the numbers both drop again and I stop the timer.
Sixty-six seconds.
“Measured velocity” is going down by one every sixty-six seconds. Some quick math tells me that’s an acceleration of…15 meters per second per second. That’s the same “gravity” acceleration I worked out earlier.
The force I’m feeling isn’t gravity. And it’s not a centrifuge. I’m in a spaceship that is constantly accelerating in a line. Well, actually it’s decelerating—the values are going down.
And that velocity…it’s a lot of velocity. Yes, it’s going down, but wow! To reach Earth orbit you only need to go 8 kps. I’m going over 11,000. That’s faster than anything in the solar system. Anything that fast will escape the sun’s gravity and go flying off into interstellar space.
The readout doesn’t have anything to indicate what direction I’m going. Just a relative velocity. So now my question is: Am I barrelingtowardthe sun, orawayfrom it?
It’s almost academic. I’m either on a collision course with the sun or on my way out to deep space with no hope of returning. Or, I might be headed in the sun’s general direction, but not on a collision course. If that’s the case, I’ll miss the sun…andthenfly off into deep space with no hope of returning.
