As Nicole watched, a red line of lights moved quickly up the surface, stopping at a point above her head where there was a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy. “We will go first to the geography section,” the Eagle said, pointing at the place where the line of lights had stopped, “then to engineering, and finally to biology. After a short break, we will continue into the second domain. Any more questions before we start?”
They drove up what appeared to be an ascending ramp in a small car similar to the one they had used in the Habitation Module during Nicole’s visit with Michael and Simone. Although the path in front and behind them was illuminated, whatever was beside the car was always in the dark.
“What’s around us?” Nicole asked after they had been driving for almost ten minutes.
“Data storage mostly, plus a few exhibits,” the Eagle said. “It is dark so that you are not unnecessarily distracted.”
Eventually they stopped beside another tall door. “The room you are about to enter,” the Eagle said, setting up Nicole’s wheelchair, “is the largest single room in this domain. It is half a kilometer across at its widest point. Inside currently is a model of the Milky Way Galaxy. Once we enter, we will be standing on a mobile platform that we can command to take us to any point in the room. It will be mostly dark inside, and there will be displays and structures both above us and below us. You might feel as if you are going to fall, but remember that you are weightless.”
The view from the platform was spectacular. Even before they began to move toward the center of the vast room, Nicole was overwhelmed. Lights representing stars were everywhere in the blackness that surrounded them. Single stars, binaries, combination triples. Small, stable yellow stars, red giants, white dwarfs-they even passed directly over an exploding supernova. In every location, in every direction, there was something different and fascinating to see.
After a few minutes the Eagle stopped the platform. “I thought we’d start here, where you are familiar with the territory,” he said.
Using a pointer with multiple light beams, he indicated a nearby yellow star. “Do you recognize this place?”
Nicole was still staring at the endless lights in all directions. “Are all hundred billion stars in the galaxy actually modeled in this room?” she asked.
“No,” the Eagle replied. “What you are seeing here is only a large section of the galaxy. I’ll explain more to you in a few minutes when we go to the top of the room and can look down on the central galactic plane. I brought you to this particular spot for another purpose.”
Nicole recognized me Sun, and the Centauri triple, its closest neighbor, and even Barnard’s star and Sinus. She could not remember the names of most of the other stars in the local neighborhood of the Sun. She did, however, manage to locate another solitary yellow star not too far away.
“Is that Tau Ceti?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed,” said the Eagle.
Tau Ceti seems so close to the Sun, Nicole thought, but in reality it is so very far away. That means the galaxy is larger than any of us could possibly comprehend.
“The distance from the Sun to Tau Ceti,” the Eagle said, as if he were reading her mind, “is one ten- thousandth of the distance across the galaxy.”
Nicole shook her head as the platform began to move away from the Sun and Tau Ceti. There is so much more than I had ever imagined, she thought. Even my journeys have taken place in an insignificantly small region of space. Off the moving platform to Nicole’s right, the Eagle projected a three-dimensional line drawing in the shape of a rectangular solid. By manipulating the black device that he was holding in his hand, he made the volume of the solid alternately larger and smaller.
“We have many different ways to control what is projected in this room,” the Eagle said. “With this device we can change the scale and zoom in on any particular region of the galaxy. Let me show you. Suppose I put the red light here, in the middle of the Orion Nebula. That marks the desired initial position of the platform. Then let me expand this geometrical shape to enclose about a thousand stars… Now, presto.”
It was pitch-black in the room for about a second. Then suddenly Nicole was again dazzled, but this time by a different set of lights. The clusters and individual stars were much more clearly defined. The Eagle explained that the entire room was now contained inside the Orion Nebula and that the longest room dimension was now the equivalent of a few hundred light-years, instead of sixty thousand light-years as before.
“This particular area is a stellar nursery,” the Eagle said, “where stars and planets are just being born.” He moved the platform toward the right. “Over here, for example, is an infant star system, in the early stages of formation, with many of the characteristics that your solar system had four and a half billion years ago.”
He inscribed a small solid figure around one of the stars, and a few seconds later the room was filled with the light of a young sun. Nicole watched a gigantic solar storm move across the moiling surface. A coronal burst arced high above her head, shooting a finger of orange and red into the blackness of space.
The Eagle steered the platform toward a much smaller, distant body, one of about a dozen accumulations of mass that could be identified in the region closely surrounding the young star. This particular planet had a slightly reddish molten surface. As they watched, a large projectile crashed into the hot fluid, ejecting material from the surface and setting up vigorous wave motion in all directions.”
“According to our statistical data,” the Eagle said, “this planet has a nontrivial probability of producing life after a few billion years of evolution, once this period of bombardment and formation is concluded. It will have.a solitary, stable host star, an atmosphere with sufficient climatic variation, plus all the chemical ingredients. Here, see for yourself. Keep your eyes on that planet. I am going to activate a special routine that scans quickly through the bottom half of the periodic chart and displays quantitative data about the comparative number of atoms of each kind that exist in that boiling stew.”
A magnificent visual display appeared in the blackness above the infant planet. Each separate atom contained in the planet’s mass was indicated both by a specific color and by its number of neutrons and protons. The size of the atom showed its comparative frequency in the mix. “Note that there are significant densities of carbon, nitrogen, the halogens, and iron,” the Eagle said. “These are the critical atoms. They were all created by nearby supernova in the not too distant past and have enriched the organizational possibilities of this forming body. Without complex chemistry, there cannot be efficient life. If iron were not available to be the central atom of hemoglobin, for example, on your planet, the oxygen distribution system of the many advanced life-forms would be much more inefficient.”
So the process continues, Nicole thought, eon after eon. Stars and planets form out of the cosmic dust. A few of the planets contain the right chemical stuff that might eventually lead to life and intelligence. But what organizes this process? What unseen hand causes these chemicals to become more and more complex and structured in time, until they reach even the state of self-awareness? Is there some yet-to-be-formulated natural law about matter organizing itself according to specified rules?
The Eagle was now explaining how unlikely it was that life would evolve in star systems that Contained only simple atoms like hydrogen and helium, and none of the more complex, higher-order atoms forged by dying stars in supernova explosions. Nicole began to feel an overpowering insignificance. She longed for something on a human scale.
“How small can you shrink this room?” Nicole said suddenly. She laughed at her own awkward phraseology. “To be more precise,” she continued, “what is the ultimate resolution of this system?”
“The finest level of detail possible,” the Eagle said, “is at a scale of four thousand ninety-six to one. At the other extreme, we can display an intergalactic scene with a greatest dimension of fifty million light-years. Remember, our interest in activities outside the galaxy is limited.”
Nicole was doing some mental calculations of her own. “Since the longest dimension of this room is half a kilometer, at the highest level of detail this room would be filled by a piece of real estate roughly two thousand kilometers long?”
“That’s right,” the Eagle said. “But why are you asking?”
Nicole was becoming more excited. “Could we zoom in on the Earth?” she asked. “And let me fly over France?”
“Yes, I guess so,” the Eagle answered after a short hesitation. “Although that is not what I had planned.”
“It would mean a lot to me.”
