Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [69]
“Uh …?” he prompted. Not the most incisive question, but questions weren’t in it. Sharon was on a roll. Nothing like wine for lubricating the words so they tumble out faster.
“Dirac set his two ratios equal and solved for G, the gravitational constant; but his theory of slowly evaporating gravity was eventually ruled out by experiment.”
“So … you solved his equation for c,” Tom guessed.
She nodded. “And c is a function of the inverse cube root of time, which …”
“Which gives a decreasing speed of light,” he finished. “But the asymptote is zero, not Einstein’s constant, n’estce pas?”
Sharon wiggled her hand. “Haven’t worked it all out yet, but the coefficient involves the rest masses of the electron and proton.”
“Which means?”
“The coefficient isn’t constant, either. Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. If c is decreasing, what happens to mass?”
“Beats me.”
“Come on, this is grade school stuff. As velocity increases toward c, mass increases. Everyone knows that. So, switch frames. What’s the difference if c decreases toward velocity?”
“Hunh, none, I suppose.”
“Right, so the universe is becoming more massive.”
Tom patted his stomach. “I thought it was your cooking.”
Sharon gave him The Look, but he grinned until finally she had to grin, too. “Okay, I’ll connect your dots.” She pushed her dinner plate to one side and leaned forward with her arms on the table. “Velocity is distance over time, right? High school physics.”
“They taught it just after the Lorentz-Fitzgerald stuff.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Well, the universe is expanding.”
He almost patted his stomach again, but caught himself in time. “Big Bang. The universe started as a little ball and exploded, right? And it’s been expanding ever since.”
“No! That’s wrong! That’s newspaper science. The urblock ‘exploded!’ The ur-block ‘exploded!’ What did it explode into, for crying out loud? You’re thinking of stars and galaxies being flung out into space; but the ur-block was space. Galaxies are racing away from each other, not from a common center. They aren’t flying farther out into space; space is expanding between them. The cosmological fluid. Get it?” A part of her—that part able to stand outside herself—could see that she had maybe drunk too much of the wine. She was babbling, and she wished she could stop, but she was goddam, freaking happy, and didn’t want to.
Tom shook his head. “Cosmological fluid …” He had a sudden, Aristotelian vision of the universe as a plenum, rather than empty space.
Sharon pressed him, eager that he should understand, for she wanted to share her joy. “Look, imagine galaxies as dots painted on the outside of a balloon—”
He slapped the table in triumph. “I knew we’d get to the balloon eventually!”
“Picture yourself as a little flat bug somewhere on the balloon. That should be easy. Now inflate the balloon. What happens to all the dots?”
Tom looked up at the lamp that hung over the dining table and tugged at his lip. “Can I see around the curve of the balloon?”
She nodded. “Yes. But it’s curved Flatland, and you can’t see up, or down into the balloon.”
Tom closed his eyes. “All the dots are racing away from me,” he decided.
“And the dots that are farthest away?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her with a grin. “They’re receding the fastest. Son of a bitch! So that’s why—”
“—Astronomers use red shift velocity to estimate distance. Now plunk yourself down somewhere else on the balloon. What do you see now?”
He shrugged. “Simil atque, obviously.”
She picked up the little peppermill from the table and set it between them. She pointed to it. “So how can the same galaxy be receding from point A …” She touched herself. “—and from point B?” She pointed to him.
Tom squinted at the surrogate