April 18 // Open
Date: April 18
Characters: Sam Carter, open
Location: Chemistry Lab
Summary: Sam's in the chemistry lab trying to make sense of nonsense.
Warnings: The laws of physics are breaking down, Science and Math stuff.
Sam sighed tossing the data pad on the table in front of her. Her computer had been running simulations for the last day and a half trying to figure out some way to reverse engineer the data from ISES into revealing what the cause of the motion perturbations really were, without any luck. The trouble is she just couldn't get the data to fit the physical models she was working with. And it wasn't the first time this happened. A few weeks ago she'd been trying to set up a program to calculate the rocket thrust necessary to alter the system's orbit, mostly as an exercise. She’d found herself stymied when she discovered that Morpheus was almost two orders of magnitude to massive to be located where it was relative to Icelus, with the effective surface gravity Morpheus had, and the tether null point located where it was. She’d hoped the computer was lying to her about Morpheus’ mass, but when she'd actually had the opportunity to measure Morpheus’ mess she found it matched exactly with the database. The same was true with Icelus.
Possibility one; the laws of physics in this universe don't actually work on a level so fundamental that the ancient Greeks had it figured out. Possibility two; there were one or more additional inertial masses tied to the system that they were as yet unaware of. Possibility three; the obscenely advanced technological civilization that had brought them to this primitive space station for some unknown reason was employing said obscenely advanced technologies in order to alter the inertial properties of the system for some unknown reason.
Sam's head hurt, and that didn't even get in to what she'd been trying to figure out this last week from the data she brought back from the artifact. An artifact that now seemed to be destabilizing their motion, and threatening to cause more serious problems if it was not brought under control or ejected.
It wasn't until she re-examined the Mass readings yesterday morning after the oscillations had started that she'd noticed that over the 10 minutes she'd been recording Mass readings there was a slight trend in average mass so that over that 10 minute period the average mass of the object increased by about 30 kg. She probably could’ve been forgiven for missing it the first time she'd looked at the data; according to her sensors over that 10 minute period the mass rapidly oscillated over 1000 kg or about half a percent of its total mass. At that time its average density had been slightly more than gold.
Cyril was right, she really should post her findings on the computer network; as preliminary and inconclusive as they were, the rest of the colony should at least have some idea what they're up against. She also needed to get back over to Morpheus to take more Mass readings of the object, and figure out what its growth rate is.
Sam slumped at the workbench staring dejectedly at the pomelo-sized artifact fragment on a scale in front of her, letting her eyes trace over its fractal surface. It now claim to mass over 157kg giving it roughly the density of gold, but for some reason she could still pick up and move it around as easily as you could. When she’d first weighed it, it had roughly the density of graphite and massed 18 kg, an eight fold increase in mass over the week. She doubted the growth rate was linear though.
Characters: Sam Carter, open
Location: Chemistry Lab
Summary: Sam's in the chemistry lab trying to make sense of nonsense.
Warnings: The laws of physics are breaking down, Science and Math stuff.
Sam sighed tossing the data pad on the table in front of her. Her computer had been running simulations for the last day and a half trying to figure out some way to reverse engineer the data from ISES into revealing what the cause of the motion perturbations really were, without any luck. The trouble is she just couldn't get the data to fit the physical models she was working with. And it wasn't the first time this happened. A few weeks ago she'd been trying to set up a program to calculate the rocket thrust necessary to alter the system's orbit, mostly as an exercise. She’d found herself stymied when she discovered that Morpheus was almost two orders of magnitude to massive to be located where it was relative to Icelus, with the effective surface gravity Morpheus had, and the tether null point located where it was. She’d hoped the computer was lying to her about Morpheus’ mass, but when she'd actually had the opportunity to measure Morpheus’ mess she found it matched exactly with the database. The same was true with Icelus.
Possibility one; the laws of physics in this universe don't actually work on a level so fundamental that the ancient Greeks had it figured out. Possibility two; there were one or more additional inertial masses tied to the system that they were as yet unaware of. Possibility three; the obscenely advanced technological civilization that had brought them to this primitive space station for some unknown reason was employing said obscenely advanced technologies in order to alter the inertial properties of the system for some unknown reason.
Sam's head hurt, and that didn't even get in to what she'd been trying to figure out this last week from the data she brought back from the artifact. An artifact that now seemed to be destabilizing their motion, and threatening to cause more serious problems if it was not brought under control or ejected.
It wasn't until she re-examined the Mass readings yesterday morning after the oscillations had started that she'd noticed that over the 10 minutes she'd been recording Mass readings there was a slight trend in average mass so that over that 10 minute period the average mass of the object increased by about 30 kg. She probably could’ve been forgiven for missing it the first time she'd looked at the data; according to her sensors over that 10 minute period the mass rapidly oscillated over 1000 kg or about half a percent of its total mass. At that time its average density had been slightly more than gold.
Cyril was right, she really should post her findings on the computer network; as preliminary and inconclusive as they were, the rest of the colony should at least have some idea what they're up against. She also needed to get back over to Morpheus to take more Mass readings of the object, and figure out what its growth rate is.
Sam slumped at the workbench staring dejectedly at the pomelo-sized artifact fragment on a scale in front of her, letting her eyes trace over its fractal surface. It now claim to mass over 157kg giving it roughly the density of gold, but for some reason she could still pick up and move it around as easily as you could. When she’d first weighed it, it had roughly the density of graphite and massed 18 kg, an eight fold increase in mass over the week. She doubted the growth rate was linear though.