Spatialogy

cover art by Frank R. Paul

I recently became aware of Donald H. Menzel, an astronomer who wrote a few science fiction stories. In the August 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus was his article "The End of the Moon". I was first exposed to the idea of needing to defend Earth from the Moon when I read Against the Fall of Night. For that story, Clarke imagined some kind of giant ray gun that had been used to destroy the Moon when it came too close to Earth. As told by Clarke, that dramatic "defense of the Earth" was between 1 and 2 billion years in our future.

My understanding is that the Moon has been gradually moving away from Earth ever since it formed. Maybe 5 billion years from now, the Sun is expected to swell up and might swallow the Earth and our Moon. If not, then in the very far future the moon might start moving closer to Earth, but will it matter?

back cover

So, I've never understood why folks like Clarke and Menzel were worried about the Moon approaching the Earth. Menzel suggested that you did not really need a Clarke-style Moon Wars Defense System because when the Moon gets too close to Earth, the Moon should fragment and its pieces form a ring around the Earth.

By the way, I love the fact that some old Sci Fi magazines had wrap-around covers. To the left is the back cover illustration of Earth's ring.

Nyny. Back in 1953, the editor of Science-Fiction Plus was making use of the term "spatialogy" to mean the scientific study of space and mercifully that name never caught on. "Spatialogy" is quite an awkward mouthful. I hang my head in shame over having invented the word 'Nyrturian'.

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Growing up in the 1960s, my dad had a book on the shelf called Modern Space Science. As shown in the graph here, the popularity of the term "space science" reached a high point of popularity in the late 1960s. Between "space science" and the various sub-disciplines of "astronomy", I think "spatialogy" is pretty well covered.

Chicken Little. If we don't need to worry about the Moon, then what celestial dangers should people worry about? I recently watched the overly-long film Don't Look Up which turns the idea of Humanity's destruction by a Chicxulub-style impact into satirical comedy.

in the Ekcolir Reality (source)

One of the main points made by Don't Look Up is that the interests of Mega-Corporations can prevent open discussion of important scientific discoveries. The Chicxulub impact crater was recognized by Pemex personnel about ten years before its existence was finally made public. In Don't Look Up, the fictional president of the United States orders the scientists who discover a comet heading for Earth to not tell the public about their big discovery.

Compared to an extinction-level impact event, the current global warming danger seems very tame. For the Exode Saga, I've tried to imagine how alien meddling might intensify our climate change problems (see Climate Fiction) in the Ekcolir Reality.

Nyrtia's first time travel mission

For my current science fiction writing project, The Historical Archive, I'm about 16,000 words into the story and have mentioned R. Nyrtia's need "to correctly incorporate the spatial dimensions into her Theory of Time" in part 2. I'm tempted to use the term "spatialogy" to refer to the study of the dimensional structure of space that is relevant to teleportation.

For The Historical Archive, I imagine that R. Nyrtia devises a time machine that is very similar to what Isaac Asimov described in his time travel novel, The End of Eternity. From Chapter 6; "In order to enter Time the co-ordinates fixing the desired region on Earth's surface had painstakingly to be adjusted and the desired moment in Time pin-pointed". From Chapter 1: "Two of the screens in the viewing chamber were in operation... the engineers had focused them already to the exact co-ordinates in Space and Time..." 

The End of Eternity

Asimov was vague about the location of Eternity, the space-time bubble from which his imagined time travelers would travel to the selected space-time coordinates of a place-time on Earth. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that Eternity is in the Hierion Domain, a domain of space beyond the three-dimensional universe of hadronic matter.

In any case, I have adopted the idea that R. Nyrtia's time machine is also capable of what we would normally call teleportation. Any location on Earth is accessible and can be carefully Viewed in advance of a time travel trip to the targeted place-time.

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In addition to the Hadron Domain and the Hierion Domain, there is also the Sedron Domain. Nyrtia's time machine uses "sedron condensers" to organize a complex array of sedrons that make it possible to carry out the stupendous quantum calculations that are required for instantaneously transporting a person through time and space to a new place-time in the universe.

So, Nyrtia's time machine must make use of the type of "scanners" that were originally part of the teleportation equipment at Observer Base. When Nyrtia finally completes work on her time travel machine, the teleportation scanners have recently pin-pointed the location of a mysterious anomaly inside Earth. I've previously imagined that Nyrtia travels 2 billion years into the past to meet the Phari, but I had not previously imagined that particular time travel journey taking place until much later in Earth's Reality Chain. 

Moon

However, what kinds of useful technologies might Nyrtia obtain from the pek when she explores the mysterious bioreactors that are hidden away inside Earth? Also, in the past I've imagined that it was often convenient to pretend that Observer Base is located on the Moon. But what if R. Nahan does not bother to maintain that fiction during the First Reality when he is Master of Observer Base?

Related Reading: "Urashima Tarô"

Next: Part 3 of The Historical Archive.

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