Читать книгу Delta G - David J. Crawford - Страница 8

The C-141 Starlifter cargo plane had been in the air for about three hours heading north out of McGuire AFB, New Jersey to Sondrestrom Air Base on the west coast of Greenland. The accommodations weren’t too bad. For the grueling five hour flight, actual passenger seats were clamped onto the aluminum cargo deck in lieu of the cargo net seats. Surprisingly, there were a dozen or so passengers on this flight along with several cargo pallets on their way to the Arctic. As Captain Sheridan grabbed for a cup of coffee, he accidentally dropped it. The hot liquid literally froze to the metal floor before the crew chief could come back with some paper towels to clean it up. The pilot had announced that the outside air temperature was a balmy minus sixty-four degrees.

When he got up to use the six hundred dollar toilet seat, he took the opportunity to look out one of the door windows. He had never been this far north before. Looking above, there was a dark indigo sky without a cloud in sight. Down below, the colors and geography were magnificent and striking. The ocean was majestic blue, the icebergs and ice flows were blinding white, and the black rock cliffs along the fjords gave a foreboding, yet, tranquil appearance.

A couple of hours later, the pilot began his approach up the ninety mile long fjord into Sondrestrom. Glaciers fanned out into the ocean and adjacent fjords for as far as the eye could see. Water in the ice crevasses was a beautiful blue, like someone had poured Aqua Velva aftershave onto the ice.

Dave had studied up on Sondrestrom prior to his departure. What he found was fascinating. Beginning in September of 1941, Sondrestrom Air Base was built under the guidance of the famed Arctic explorer and aviator, Bert Balchen. During World War II, Sondrestrom was known as Bluie West 8 or BW-8, and was an alternate base for the ferrying of aircraft to England. It soon became one of the most important stopover sites for flying missions between the US and Europe, due to the fine flying conditions for which Sondrestrom became known.

The base was laid out on a sandbar near the beginning of the fjord. The fjord was about a mile wide at this point and was surrounded by thousand foot cliffs and mountains with a five hundred foot tall glacier entering the fjord a couple of miles upstream. The massive Greenland icecap, twice the size of Texas, was only twenty miles to the east. Greenland is a Danish Territory. The 50,000 residents, mostly Inuits, were in the process of voting for home rule and independence from Denmark.

It took a great deal of piloting skill to land at Sonde, as it was affectionately called. You had to be specially trained and signed off to make the risky approach and landing. There had been quite a few nasty accidents over the years. As a matter of fact, one of them involved a C-141 in the late summer of 1976. The first third of the runway here has an upslope. During landings, the rest of the runway seems to disappear over the horizon. This optical illusion may have caused the pilot to think he either overshot the runway or that the runway was very short. As a result, after touchdown the pilot evidently decided to go around for another try. During the liftoff the plane over-rotated, developed a nose-high attitude and then stalled. It crashed on the runway, killing seven crew members, and sixteen passengers. The navigator and three passengers survived.

Rumor has it, that the base chef was one of the survivors. He has now been on base for the past nine years, because he absolutely refuses to get on another aircraft.

The Starlifter made a smooth landing on the 12,000 foot runway exactly on schedule at 1100 hours on a balmy spring day in 1985.

An Air Force bus met the passengers at the plane and dropped them off at base operations. Dave was met there by the Base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Snyder. “Welcome to Sondrestrom, Captain. I know this flight is an ass kicker. Let’s get you over to billeting. Your bags will be delivered there shortly.” Snyder drove him over to the Visiting Officers Quarters (VOQ) and walked him up to the desk. “Henry, take care of this young man. Give him a wakeup call for 1400 hours and then run him over to my office.”

Snyder was right. The flight was grueling. He’d been up since 0400 to get ready for the 0600 flight that morning. He took the key from the desk clerk, thanked Snyder and stumbled off to his room. He was surprised at how modern and nice the room was. He had envisioned something between an igloo and Quonset hut. Instead, this reminded him of any Ramada Inn in the States. He took his boots off, flopped on the bed and crashed.

Three hours later, the phone rang. Henry was on the line with his wakeup call and told him that his bags were outside his door. He guessed that they didn’t have to worry about someone running off with your luggage up here. Their getaway route would only be six miles long at the most. That was the longest road in Greenland that ran down to the port. Amazing, the amount of trivia he had already tucked away.

Henry told the Captain that transportation would be waiting in half an hour. He used the time to get cleaned up, put on a fresh uniform, and walk down to the lobby. He was met there by Master Sergeant Andy Caudill. “Good afternoon, Captain. I’m here to drive you to your 1400 meeting. We’ll be stopping by the Danish Hotel on the other side of the base to pick up Dr. Paul Rapp and Dr. Ralph Timken. These gentlemen are doing the ice core drilling out at the DYE-3 site.”

He hopped into the staff car and got the guided tour of the base on their way around the runway to the Danish side of the base. He was surprised by the number of buildings, and warehouses. He was even more surprised to see cabins and bungalows scattered on the sides of the hills. Sergeant Caudill explained that many Danes flew in from Copenhagen to spend the summers here. Also, several Inuits that worked at the base lived here, too.

The Danish Hotel was even more impressive than the VOQ. They walked into the lobby and met Dr. Rapp and Dr. Timken waiting for them. “Hello Captain Sheridan, nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Dr. Rapp said as he shook his hand. This surprised him. He didn’t know he had a reputation, let alone one that preceded him. “Thanks…I hope,” he quipped.

The sergeant interrupted politely and pointed out they were five minutes late for their 1400 meeting. They hopped in the staff car and drove back around to the Air Force side of the base. Along the way, he noticed a huge shaggy looking buffalo critter a hundred yards off the end of the runway. Dave asked, “Is that a musk ox?” The sergeant replied, “Yes, sir. It sure is. Those things are too stupid to know that they are supposed to be extinct. They are all over the place. Have to watch driving at night. And believe me; the nights can be really long up here.”

The car pulled up to the Base Headquarters building. All four men walked up to the front door. Every facility had a cable running between them strung between bollards every fifty feet or so. The sergeant smiled and said, “We use those to find our way home when the wind kicks up and puts us in a whiteout; nice to have around after a beer or two over at the Caribou Club.”

The sergeant led them into Colonel Snyder’s office. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Have a seat.” Dave sat down at the end of a huge black leather couch. “Captain, I know you haven’t had much time to get acquainted with our two distinguished professors here. So I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you up to speed.” Dave relaxed a bit and listened intently.

“Quite frankly, General Giffen at NORAD called me VFR direct and wants me to provide you all with any support, facilities, and resources you need to accomplish your mission here. This includes C-130 support to the icecap. I only know the basics of what you’re doing out there: some kind of ice-core drilling for gravitational mapping up here, and something about improving targeting for ICBMs and orbital station keeping for our spy satellites. I don’t need to know the details. I’ll just follow my orders to support you anyway I can.” Colonel Snyder called in the sergeant, “Andy, bring us a pot of coffee and have the club run over some sandwiches.”

Colonel Snyder continued, “Captain, we have an office set up for you. You will be acting as Quality Assurance Engineer up here watching over the contractors running the DYE sites here in Greenland. Also, the transition from Tactical Air Command to Space Command is going to take some time up here. We’ve got quite a few projects underway to support the Space Shuttle polar orbit operations when they start launching off of SLC-6 at Vandenberg. This cover will give you access to all the facilities and communications capabilities up here. Before you ask, this room has been cleared for TS discussions, no Russian bugs in here. We also have a secure conference room here for your use. Dr. Rapp and Dr. Timken have their lab and facilities located at DYE-3. Their cover, as I understand, is ice-core drilling for researching weather patterns and airborne pollutions. The ice out there is over a hundred thousand years old and over two miles thick. That should keep them busy for a while.”

Dr. Timken acknowledged this, but also made an interesting point. “Thank you, you are correct Colonel Snyder. Hopefully, we are going to kill about four birds with the same stone out here. We have funding and grants from several different organizations, so we will be doing other science as well as our gravitational experiments. As a matter of fact, gravitational experiments are not new. There is nothing super-secret about what we are investigating out here. We will be trying to delve into the universal gravitational constant. Scientists have attempted to do this all over the world. The trick is you need vast areas of constant density materials to conduct the experiments, such as salt mines. We’ve elected to come up here to the icecap because ice has predictable qualities and near constant density for over the twenty-five square miles that we require.”

Colonel Snyder interrupted, “Excuse me Dr. Timken, I’m a simple soldier that has a degree in Military History. What’s so special about this constant you are trying to figure out? I took enough science and physics to make me knowledgeable but dangerous. From what I understand g is not a constant. It varies with where you are on Earth. Isn’t it something like 9.8 meters per second²? It’s only about a sixth of this value on the Moon, so how can it be considered a constant?”

Rapp answered, “Forgive me, Colonel, but you are confusing the acceleration due to gravity known as little g with the Universal Gravitational constant big G.”

Snyder laughed and said, “That’s nothing new, my wife’s always telling me I can never find the correct G spot.” Everyone had to chuckle at this one.

“What we are doing up here is trying to prove that the big G is not a constant throughout the known universe. I’d like to take a few minutes to refresh your Physics 101, if I may?” Timken continued.

Snyder leaned back in his chair and threw his feet up on his desk. “Go right ahead. Continue with your explanation. It’s not like I have a tee time to make or anything. We’ve got all day…which up here can be six months long.” Dave had the sickening feeling that this fact would be stressed time after time.

Timken laughed and assured everyone that they would not be there anywhere near that long. He continued on with his history lesson. “A few flashes of inspiration and genius occur about every half century that fundamentally change the human race. One of these was the falling apple that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to formulate his findings on gravity.”

He stood up and walked over to the dry erase board. “Colonel, may I use this to humor my academic nature?” Snyder replied, “Sure, I’m left brained and you’ll need to draw me a picture anyway.”

“Thank you, sir,” Timken continued, “as you all know, Newton once saw an apple falling from a tree and had an inspirational thought. He observed that as the apple fell, it accelerated since its velocity changed from zero as it was hanging on the tree and then sped up as it moved toward the ground. Thus, Newton concluded that there must be a force that acted on the apple to cause this acceleration. He called this force, gravity, and the resulting acceleration, the acceleration due to gravity. This is the little g as we discussed earlier. He then wondered what would happen if the apple tree was twice as high. Here he again expected the apple to be accelerated toward the ground and pick up even more speed. Thus, he concluded that the force gravity would reach to the top of the tallest apple tree.” Timken paused for a minute and grabbed a cup of coffee that had been poured for him.

He continued enthusiastically, “I realize this might not sound like one of those eureka moments, but you must understand, it’s what Newton did with this knowledge that counts. His brilliant conclusion was that if the force of gravity reached to the top of the highest tree, should it not reach even further; in fact, might it not reach all the way to the Moon! Then, the orbit of the Moon about the Earth could be a consequence of the gravitational force, because the acceleration due to gravity could change the velocity of the Moon in just such a way that it followed an orbit around the Earth.”

Timken drew a picture of the Earth-Moon system on the board and exclaimed, “Eureka!” and continued with his presentation.

“Newton figured out that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe with a force directed along the centers of the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects.”

With this said, he labeled the Moon, M1 and the Earth, M2, then drew a line between them and labeled it r.

Timken continued, “Thus, one of the most famous and universally accepted formulas was born.” He again picked up the marker and wrote down the famous Newtonian Equation.

F=G (M1 x M2) / R²

By pointing to big G, he concluded his lecture stating, “Where big G equals the Universal Gravitational Constant.” He continued to write out the value for G on the board.

6.67300 × 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2.

Timken put the marker down and pointed to the formula, “This strange looking number followed by these weird series of units is termed a "universal constant" because it is thought to be the same at all places and all times, and, thus, universally characterizes the intrinsic strength of the gravitational force.”

Everyone just stared at the board for a minute or two. Dr. Timken sat back down.

Colonel Snyder spoke up, “Wow, how’d you remember the value for big G. I can’t even remember my own Social Security number half the damn time.”

Dr. Timken continued his lecture by pointing out that, “Just like the value for Pi is a known constant that is used in countless formulas and calculations. And just like Einstein’s famous and inspirational equation E=MC2 equating mass and the speed of light, to energy; Newton’s Gravitational Formula is the glue that holds the heavens together.”

Dr. Rapp spoke up this time, “However, there is a caveat. Notice that big G only has three significant places past the decimal point. For a very universal constant it is one of the least known numbers in terms of accuracy. In contrast, Pi is a known constant out past a million decimal places. The natural log e is another magic number and constant in science and mathematics. It is also known out to millions of decimal places. I can recall 22 decimal places for the natural log e. It is 2.718281828459045235.”

Everyone looked at the doctor like he was the mystical Karnack the Great. He calmly said, “Okay, I do that at the faculty Christmas parties to impress the chicks. All that I have to do is memorize the equivalent of three telephone numbers and string them together.”

Dr. Timken now proceeded to wrap up the lecture. “We’re not here to improve the accuracy of big G. We’re here to prove that the constant is not constant. We’re going to blow Newtonian physics out of the water. As a matter of fact, this has implications in both relativistic and quantum physics as well.”

Colonel Snyder jumped in, “Whoa, slow down a bit. You’re getting in over my head now. What are you talking about?”

Sheridan spoke up now. It was time to put his $50,000 engineering degree out on the table. “From what I understand, Colonel, if the constant is not a constant, then there is a delta possible. This difference, or delta as it is known mathematically, allows for some interesting recalculations. If you acknowledge that G is not constant, then you can throw things like negative numbers in for mass and time into Einstein’s relativity equations and quantum physics equations. It then becomes possible to exceed the speed of light which would no longer be constant. Theoretically, time travel would even be possible both forward and backward.”

Colonel Snyder looked at Dave and said, “Holy shit, Captain. I thought you were up here because there was some targeting glitch with our ICBMs and our satellites keep taking a left hook worse than my tee shot. Now you’re talking about H.G. Wells’ time machine crap. Hell, even I can figure out that the constant is accurate to within plus or minus a few hundredth of a percent. That’s not enough to account for antimatter and time warps.”

Before Dave could recover from the frontal assault, both professors came to his defense. Dr. Rapp simply held up his hands and said, “Eureka! You’ve got it Colonel, the Captain is essentially correct. You’d be surprised what the supercomputers show is possible over galactic distances and eons with this small inconsistency. This is going to revolutionize science and physics. Humanity is at the dawn of an earth-shattering revelation that the Universal Gravitational Constant is not a constant and thus not universal. The implications are just now being understood! Welcome to the threshold of the brave new world.”

“Okay, Professors, you’ve definitely piqued my interest. Now please tell me how drilling a few holes into the world’s largest ice cube is going to prove your case?”

Dr. Rapp spoke up, “Well, I’m glad you have an open mind and haven’t thrown us out on our asses in the snow. It’s damn cold out there. What we plan to do out at DYE-3 is drill five holes about four miles apart. These holes will be about eight inches in diameter and two kilometers deep. We’ll then drop a LaCoste & Romberg borehole gravity meter down the holes and measure the gravity about every eight hundred feet or so.”

Colonel Snyder asked. “What the heck is a gravity meter?”

Dr. Rapp explained patiently, “A gravity meter consists of a weight on the end of a horizontal beam supported by a zero-length spring. A zero-length spring is defined as one in which the tension is proportiona1 to the actual length of the spring, that is, if all external forces were removed the spring would collapse to zero length. The gravity meter can detect very small changes in gravity by measuring the restoring force necessary to bring the horizontal beam to a reference position. It is important to note that the instrument does not measure the total force of gravity, only changes in gravity.”

Dave asked, “What’s the status of the drilling at DYE-3?” Dr. Timken answered, “We have two drills delivered at the site and have started drilling with one. We have enough pipe to drill about halfway down. This is our biggest logistics tail. We need about 350 lengths of 20 foot long pipe. Also, once we reach bedrock under the icecap we are going to take some core samples with a diamond core drill bit. Nobody really knows what’s down there.”

Colonel Snyder picked up a folder off his desk, “I have the manifest here for the two support flights out to the DYE-3 site in the morning. I see a bunch of pipe, some instrumentation, core hole lubricant,…..that sounds kinky,….and other instruments and equipment on the two planes. Captain, you’ll be on Raven One that leaves at 0730. Professors, you’ll leave about an hour later on Raven Two.”

Dr. Timken concluded the meeting by saying, “Thank you for your help and interest in this project. Dr. Rapp and I need to go over to the Logistic warehouse to make sure everything is prepared for the morning’s flight.”

Snyder stood up and shook their hands. Dave gave the colonel a crisp salute and shook his hand as well. Snyder punched the intercom, “Sergeant, please run these gentlemen over to the Raytheon Warehouse and run our good Captain back over to the VOQ. Before you go Captain, take this back with you.” Snyder handed him a three ring binder, “That’s a little home work for you to get familiar with where you are going in the morning.”

After returning to his room and changing into his sweats, he laid across the bed. He opened up the orientation notebook and began reading about the DYE sites.

There were four DYE sites located in southern Greenland close to the Arctic Circle. DYE-1 was located on the west coast on a two thousand foot peak overlooking the Baffin Sea. DYE-4 was on the east coast on another mountain peak on the Island of Kulusuk, an extinct volcano.

The USAF also had two radar and communications stations out on the icecap. DYE-2 was built approximately one hundred miles east of Sondrestrom AB and ninety miles south of the Arctic Circle at an altitude of 7,600 feet. DYE-3 was located approximately one hundred miles east of DYE-2 and slightly south at a higher elevation of 8,600 feet.

The locations for the icecap sites were found to receive from three to four feet of snow fall each year. Since the winds were constantly blowing, at times over one hundred mph, this snow accumulation constantly formed large drifts. To overcome this potential problem, it was decided that DYE-2 and DYE-3 should be elevated approximately twenty feet above the surface of the icecap.

Eight huge I-beam columns, along with two 350 ton hydraulic jacks per column were used to lift the site above the snow. These jacks were designed to level the building whenever it became necessary due to different rates of settlement between the beams. The “big eyes” were forty feet long by four feet wide by five feet high and weighed fifteen tons each.

The icecap sites were built like offshore oil platforms, similar to the Texas Towers. They were 125 feet tall with five stories of support equipment, storage, and crew accommodations. The radome was fifty feet tall. The sites encompassed 45,000 square feet and weighed over five million pounds each.

Each site was manned by a twelve to eighteen man crew. Dave thought to himself, “This is the real Ice Station Zebra. Just like Dreamland at Area 51, it did exist.” He read on with fascination.

Each site was built by flying in the components one piece at a time on specially equipped C-130 Hercules cargo planes. Thousands of flights were required to haul all the pieces to the top of the icecap. Over 127,000 tons of steel and equipment were landed on the icecap.

Dave closed the book and pondered a thought of how many billions must have been spent up here. “Wow, your tax dollars at work.” He flipped off the light and tucked in for the night. He felt like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.