PNPC Lieutenant JG Rachel Morgan - The Hawking Solution
Martin Tucker
Morgan: ::shrugging:: You got me, I’m just the engineer. I can build things, take things apart, and put them back together again. Quantum mechanics and black holes? So not my area of expertise. But I do catch on damn quick. ::she turned to Zh’taan:: You’re the scientist, what say you?
Zh'taan: ::turns to Rachel:: I know time is tight, but I need information. What’s clear is we must continue emitting anyons to prevent the ship from being surrounded by chronitons, which accelerate the damage effects. ::Continues scanning his LCARS::
Dohna: Response
Zh'taan: I still have a few databases to search, but given the ship’s current state and the time left, it’s going to be hard to find a miracle solution…
There had to be something they could do, without getting pulled into the damn thing.
Dohna: Response
Morgan: There has to be a way. The deflector is still operational. What if we used it to saturate the black hole with neutrinos? I’m thinking to use them to dilate the wormhole. If we manage to contain it, we could give our teams and craft time to return. Any better ideas?
Zh'taan: ::I don’t think neutrinos would work; they aren’t solid particles with mass. They would get sucked in by the black hole even faster than anyons, and the chronitons would reform around us in mass. ::His fingers stop typing on the screen:: Can you give me the status of the tractor beam?
He was right, and her first-year engineering class professor would be all over her for that mistake. Outside of temporary assignments to ships testing warp drives and propulsion systems, this was her first post on a starship, which was going to last more than a month or two. She’d been aboard since the new warp core was nestled into place.
Morgan: ::looking at her readout:: Tractor beam seems to be in working order. I’m curious to see where you're going with this, Mister Zh’taan.
Dohna: Response
Zh'taan: ::Smiles as he transfers the page from his LCARS to a larger screen visible to the team:: I found something. The black hole generates a massive gravitational force. But the tractor beam could allow us to create antigraviton particles. I think this could reduce the black hole’s pull.
Morgan: That might just work, but I’m working on a backup solution, and I’m running the simulations right now. But because of the power issues, it’s taking a bit longer than I had anticipated. oO Don’t mind me quadruple checking Oo
Dohna: Response
Rachel continued running simulations on her calculations, and the simulations were working. She just wanted to make sure, if it worked, they may not have to worry about the black hole ever, and at least fix the system, it was the chronitons that could end up forming another one. It was a risk they had to take at this point.
They still had people on the surface of the moon; a ship had apparently entered the Ronin’s sphere of influence. So things were starting to go pear-shaped, and Rachel wanted to be ready. According to the latest damage report, there were some overloads in sickbay, but no injuries. There was still a small fire on deck 6, but they were working on putting it out.
Zh'taan: ::Types commands on his LCARS and sends the results to the screen:: I just sent the maximum distance the ship should maintain from the black hole and the power settings for the tractor beam. If we manage to back away and use the tractor beam in repulsive mode, we can get far enough from the black hole to stay safe long enough to recover our teams. This could give us at least 30 more minutes compared to the current situation.
Her final simulation ran, and the computer returned to a ‘happy’ chirp, which meant the last two they ran cut the mustard, as her dad used to say. He always had a saying for any situation, which reminded her that the next time they were on Earth, she needed to set flowers on his grave.
Morgan: I’m pretty sure I found a Plan B, and it might be good enough to buy us all the time we need. I mean, we could make this black hole nothing but a micro-black hole. But get that beam ready.
Dohna: Response
Zh'taan: Understood, I’ll handle synchronizing the beam with the black hole.
Morgan: Okay, let's not get out over our skis just yet. Go easy with that tractor beam. I’m reconfiguring the deflector array, gimme a second.
Zh’taan/Dohna: Response
Rachel was still working on her theory; if it worked, it would shrink the temporal black hole to a point where it wouldn’t matter, and the Ronin would be able to leave whenever they wanted to. You see, when a black hole decays, it does so because of Hawking radiation, which, over time, will reduce its mass and indeed shrink it. What happens over what could be millions of years? They need to produce enough Hawking radiation, use a focused beam from the deflector dish, and do it in what should be minutes, whereas nature would take its sweet ass time.
It was by now that she noticed the tractor beam wasn’t working in repulse mode. So firs Morgan had to set up the deflector dish to absorb the Hawking radiation into the ship so they could fire it back out at the black hole. Or at least that was Rachel’s theory.
Morgan: Mister Zh’taan, I need you to configure the deflector array to take in that Hawking radiation. Once we’ve collected enough, we should be able to fire it at the damn thing and shrink it to a point where it’s not bothersome for us, or anyone else.
Zh’taan/Dohna: Response
Rachel made a few more adjustments to the deflector dish; hopefully, she wasn’t tinkering too much. That was sometimes a weakness, wanting to adjust and adjust, took up too much time. It was also the perfectionist in her, something that she inherited from her mom.
Morgan: Here goes nothing! ::she slammed her down on the engage button::
