Sunfall Read online

  SUNFALL

  JIM AL-KHALILI

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART I: Magnetosphere Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART II: Coronal Mass Ejection Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Interlude

  Chapter 29

  Interlude

  PART III: The ODIN Project Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Technical Note on Dark Matter

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JIM Al-Khalili OBE, FRS is a quantum physicist, author and broadcaster based at the University of Surrey, where he holds a joint chair in physics and the public engagement in science. He has written ten books, translated into over twenty languages. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries and also presents the long-running weekly BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific. A recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the inaugural Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, he is also the current president of the British Science Association. He was appointed OBE in 2007 for services to science and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. Sunfall is his first novel.

  Also by Jim Al-Khalili

  BLACK HOLES, WORMHOLES AND TIME MACHINES

  QUANTUM: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

  PATHFINDERS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ARABIC SCIENCE

  PARADOX: THE NINE GREATEST ENIGMAS IN SCIENCE

  QUANTUM MECHANICS: A LADYBIRD EXPERT BOOK

  GRAVITY: A LADYBIRD EXPERT BOOK

  With Johnjoe McFadden

  LIFE ON THE EDGE: THE COMING OF AGE OF QUANTUM BIOLOGY

  With Ray Mackintosh, Björn Jonson and Teresa Peña

  NUCLEUS: A TRIP INTO THE HEART OF MATTER

  As editor

  ALIENS: SCIENCE ASKS: IS ANYONE OUT THERE?

  WHAT’S NEXT: EVEN SCIENTISTS CAN’T PREDICT THE FUTURE – OR CAN THEY?

  For more information on Jim Al-Khalili and his books,

  see his website at www.jimal-khalili.com

  To Julie

  Prologue

  40,000 BC – Neander Valley, east of modern-day Düsseldorf, Germany

  He had been staring out at the raging storm for days, hungrier than he could ever remember. The limestone cave was still warm thanks to the fire he had started as soon as he’d regained enough strength to collect wood. The flames were weaker now and his stockpile had run out. His skills with fire had always been a source of great pride, both for him and his mate. Now, his cave, his sanctuary, was also his prison.

  He knew, with a deep and intuitive certainty, that he was the last of his kind. It made him sad. And angry. He stood at the cave entrance, his furs wrapped tightly around his shoulders, and screamed in defiant rage at the world outside as though he could drown out the howling wind.

  During the night of the last full moon his mate had been angry that he was too sick to go out with the other hunters to find food, so she had gone instead. She hadn’t come back. When he had eventually grown strong enough to leave the cave he had gone looking for her. He hadn’t found her, but had instead stumbled across the bodies of several others of his tribe – not just the hunters, but their mates and a few of the young. They had been half-buried in the snow where the gorge opened into the wide river valley and he had puzzled over what had befallen them. Many of his people had already died, either from hunger or cold during the previous harsh winter – their already low numbers dwindling steadily as the winters became worse and powerful storms ravaged the landscape. They had found it difficult to adapt; familiar plants and animals had disappeared, and food supplies had become even scarcer.

  None of the bodies he’d found showed any obvious signs of injury from attack by rival groups or wild animals and he attributed their red and blistered skin to frostbite, but was confused about why they had stayed out long enough to freeze to death, when they were so close to the shelter of their caves.

  Overcome with grief he had struggled back to his cave. He had wanted to bury and mourn them properly but knew that would have to wait until his strength returned. His priority had been to find food and he’d been lucky to come across a skinny young deer lying dead against the base of a tree. He was so hungry and exhausted he didn’t stop to question whether its death was related to those of his people.

  He’d carried the carcass back to his cave high above the valley floor, where he cooked it over the fire and ate until he was fit to burst. Now, four days later, with the carcass cleaned to the bone, he used its hollowed-out skull to cook what little quantity of root vegetables and grasses he had been able to find before the storm set in. But his hunger was back again.

  Two weeks later, with the storm showing no signs of abating, he too would die, but of starvation rather than the fatal radiation exposure from the powerful coronal mass ejection that had taken the lives of the rest of his tribe, the shelter of his cave offering him the cruel protection that had pointlessly prolonged his life.

  He died oblivious to how special he would become. Many millennia later, when his remains were found, no one would know that he had indeed been the last of his kind to survive in northern Eurasia. And yet, by one of those rare twists of fate, he was also the first of his kind to be identified by the Homo sapien scholars who studied his bones. They named him Felhofer One, or Neanderthal One, and many of them would ponder what had caused so many of his species to disappear so suddenly.

  1

  Saturday, 22 October 2039 – outside Fairbanks, Alaska

  Brad Grochowiak was looking forward to spending some holiday time with Laura and the kids. First, though, he was looking forward to the end of this particular drive, to unloading and hitting the sack at the Holiday Inn Express. To be fair, the regular 350-mile route north from Anchorage to Fairbanks wasn’t so bad, even in late October, as long as the weather stayed clear.

  The night had been uneventful and he had less than an hour of his journey to go. Behind him, almost bumper to bumper, were six other giant trucks, identical to his own apart from their lack of a human occupant. Instead, all were linked via their autonomous AI systems. Although Brad had not had to do anything the entire journey, he knew the trucking company felt reassured having a human in the lead vehicle ready to take over manual control if necessary. After all, there was always the chance that severe weather could close in unexpectedly, particularly at this time of year. While this was an unnecessary regulation – the truck’s AI system could see far better than he ever could in bad weather and poor light – Brad wasn’t complaining. It kept him in work. In the twelve years he had been working for the company he had yet to intervene on any journey.

  He stretched his arms out, arching his back
to loosen the stiffness, then, giving the stubble on his head a vigorous rub, he leaned forward and touched the windscreen where the movie he’d only half been paying attention to faded away and the glass reverted to its natural transparency, allowing him to take in the landscape outside. It was already late morning, but the sky was only just showing signs of changing colour, heralding the start of a new day. As the sky brightened, the blackness of the snowy landscape on either side of the road turned a deep blue, contrasting spectacularly with the fiery red band of light spreading across the peaks of the mountain range far to the west. Brad had witnessed this Alaskan alpenglow all his life and it never failed to take his breath away. This had always been his favourite time of day, just before the sun spilled its first rays over the opposite horizon.

  It was only once the sun had dragged itself up into view, flooding the world with its winter light, that a tiny detail of colour caught his attention. Against the backdrop of dazzling white snow a smudge of orange and black stood out. At first Brad thought this was another vehicle far ahead on the road, or possibly a brightly coloured building in the distance, but then realized that it was a smear on the windscreen – most likely an insect that had, thanks to the unforgiving law of conservation of momentum, come off worse in its head-on collision with an object a hundred million times its mass.

  In itself, the fate of one bug wouldn’t have registered on Brad’s consciousness, but he soon noticed there were marks of several more suicidal insects all over the windscreen. He surprised himself by recognizing what they were: monarch butterflies. Last spring he’d helped his daughter with a school project collecting butterflies in the garden. Grace had informed him, with the innocent sagacity that only a nine-year-old possesses, that they were called tiger swallowtails – even though, she explained seriously, they looked very similar in colouring to their more famous cousins the monarchs. Apparently, despite monarchs never venturing this far north, you could tell the two species apart by the shape of their wings. Leaning forward to examine one of the smudges decorating his windscreen more carefully, he decided that these ones were almost certainly monarchs. But Grace was a smart kid and if she said you didn’t get monarchs in Alaska then you didn’t. Besides, butterflies were pretty little things you saw fluttering about in summertime, not in late October and this far north where the temperature was well below freezing already.

  With not much else to do with his time, he decided to investigate the matter further. His on-board computer was basic, but sufficient for his purposes. Brad didn’t feel the need for the latest holographics or virtual reality surround displays – as long as he was online he was happy. And it was reassuring to know that, however isolated he might feel out in this desolate landscape, there were always dozens of solar-powered internet drones in the stratosphere miles above his head, instantly linking him to the rest of the world.

  He cleared his throat, then spoke loudly enough to be heard above the hum of the truck’s electric motor.

  ‘Computer, show me a picture of a monarch butterfly.’

  No sooner had he finished speaking than he was staring at an array of colourful images on one side of his windscreen.

  Here is a selection of images of monarchs.

  Yup, he had been right. The insects stuck to his windscreen were indeed monarchs. Grace would be proud of him.

  ‘Tell me about monarch butterfly migrations.’

  There was a brief pause before the computer answered. Brad knew this delay was deliberate. People didn’t like the machines they communicated with responding instantly, which they were of course capable of, as though knowing in advance what they were going to be asked. Instead, all virtual-assistant AIs and chatbots these days had up to a second of built-in delay time to make them seem more humanlike in their interactions.

  Monarchs undertake one of the world’s great annual migratory journeys, when millions escape south-east Canada’s harsh winters and fly south-west all the way to Mexico. Others, west of the Canadian Rockies, will migrate due south to California. Monarch butterflies are among the many species of animals, which include several migratory birds and marine creatures, that use an inner biological compass to find their way by following the Earth’s magnetic field lines.

  ‘When are Monarch butterflies found in Alaska?’

  Monarchs cannot be found in Alaska. It is too far north for them.

  Brad conjured up in his mind an image of the map of North America. Wherever these insects had flown from, they had most certainly not been heading towards warmer climes. Clearly this group must have been hopelessly lost. Did their squadron leader have such a bad sense of direction that it had led them north instead of south? And if so, how the hell had it landed such an important job? The thought amused him. No. Surely they obeyed some sort of collective swarm mentality. But was it possible that there had been some fault in their inner compasses, however the hell they worked? He would ask Grace when he got home. It would make for a good science project. He thought about sending her the AR footage of the butterflies he had recorded on his retinal display but decided it could wait. Anyway, it’d be more fun to chat to Grace about this face to face rather than just copying over an augmented reality clip of what he was seeing on his screen.

  It never occurred to him that the fault might not lie with the butterflies at all. Absent-mindedly, he flicked on the wipers to clear the windscreen of the multi-coloured carnage.

  2

  Monday, 28 January 2041 – Rio de Janeiro

  Sarah Maitlin stared at her display and tried to clear her head, her third cafezinho of the evening cold and forgotten on her desk. She had always found coffee more effective at clearing niggling headaches than pills. Running both hands through her hair, she absent-mindedly gathered it up, twisting and tucking it into a self-sustaining bun. The coolness of the air-conditioning on her exposed neck caused a chill to run through her, despite the climate-controlled environment in the lab. She retrieved the sweater that had been hanging over the back of her chair all day, slipping it over her T-shirt, and had a sudden vision of her mother rebuking her for not caring enough about her wardrobe. ‘Why do you still wear that horrible old thing?’ she’d no doubt say. ‘You’re a very attractive woman, if you’d only make the effort.’ She smiled wryly at the thought. Her mother back in England was desperate for grandchildren and kept a close eye on Sarah’s biological clock – more than ever now that she was in her late thirties – and her multiple failed relationships.

  She dragged her attention back to the holographic display in front of her. Ordinarily, these images would have been of no more than academic interest, but this was different. As the physicist on duty at the Solar Science Institute in Rio, it was Sarah’s responsibility to keep a close eye on the Sun’s activity. Although the Institute had been set up twenty years ago to carry out basic astrophysics research, its main function over the past couple of years had been to provide early warning of any abnormal solar activity that might be of concern – the current situation being a case in point.

  The centre of the holo filling her field of vision was dominated by a high-resolution 3D video feed of the Sun, captured by a group of satellites in orbit around it – a detailed image that was both beautiful and terrifying. It was so realistic she could almost feel the heat on her face. Staring at the slowly spinning three-dimensional projection, she focused her attention on one region of the Sun’s churning and fiery surface. What she was looking at was more than a little concerning.

  She’d hoped to knock off for the day a couple of hours ago, but now knew she wouldn’t be leaving her desk just yet. Her cats would be hungry, so she made a mental note to call her neighbour in a few minutes and ask her to feed them.

  It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten anything herself since breakfast. Working this hard wasn’t doing her any good; there’d been no gym in a fortnight and her social life was a disaster. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out for a drink or dinner.

  A decent break was w
hat she needed, just as soon as this latest crisis was over. Maybe a day or two down on Copacabana. Although given the recent increasing size and number of ozone holes being punched through the atmosphere, the UV-shielded zones on the beach would be packed. These days not even the most dedicated sun-worshipper would risk lying out in the unprotected open for long. In many parts of the world it was becoming so bad that some people were reluctant to venture outside their own homes at all these days, even at night, so as not to risk unnecessary exposure to the increasingly powerful cosmic radiation. Many had micro sensors embedded under their skin to monitor the presence of high-energy particles and to alert them if it reached hazardous levels.

  But when it came to dangerous radiation from space, nothing could compete with a well-aimed blast from a coronal mass ejection. Until a few years ago, these enormous bubbles of hot plasma spat out by the Sun were of interest only to solar physicists. Sarah recalled trying to explain to her father why she found the subject so fascinating.

  ‘What’s the worry?’ he’d argued. ‘After all, the Earth has survived just fine for the past however many gazillion years without the Sun frying us.’ Ben Maitlin made no secret of his wish that his daughter had followed him into political journalism. ‘That’s how to change the world,’ he’d told her, ‘more effectively than any politician can.’ But Sarah had chosen a career in science instead, dealing with concepts he often found difficult to get his head around. And yet she knew he was immensely proud of her, always insisting she send him a copy of each research paper she published. Her mother had told her how he would often pull out her most recent article at dinner parties when asked how his daughter was getting on, and proceed to read out its title with an extravagant flourish, without the faintest idea what it meant.