67thaveJoin Date: 2011-07-14
Post Count: 34741 |
Here's what I think would happen (note that it's probably full of mistakes of science):
The New Horizons probe is affected first. After making a scheduled course correction, the probe angles a camera to snap Neptune – and misses. Bemused mission controllers note that the camera is pointed exactly where it should be, but a gas giant nearly 50,000 km in diameter has vanished.
A hurried search by Earth-based optical telescopes soon solves the mystery. Neptune is still there, but is further ‘back’ in its orbital track than it should be – as if something is slowing it down. Worried astronomers redirect optical and radio telescopes to the last six earth-months of Neptune’s track. New Horizons is retasked by NASA, and even the aging Cassini around Saturn is coaxed to point its cameras out-system.
Massive number-crunching machines get to work, with an unexpected boost as a quiet late-night call gets multiple supercomputers added to the data feed. The answer leaps out of the numbers – a solution that scientists are expecting…and dreading.
There is an intense gravitational anomaly slipping in-system. Aside from its effect on Neptune’s orbit, and an unexpected wobble now showing up in Uranus’s inclination, there is the telltale sign of gravitational lensing. NASA calls the President of the United States. Emergency. Black hole inbound.
Worst case estimates are sounded out. Under Case Alpha-One, the black hole is going to whip through the system, round the sun and eject back into interstellar space. Under case Alpha-Ten, the singularity will settle into a stable capture and begin eating the sun. In Case Omega-Ten, the singularity will impact Earth on its way through the system.
The president asks if anything can be done. Ark-spaceships? Bruce Willis and a nuke? Red Matter? It’s a no on all three. There is literally nothing the human race can do. Zeros in a bank balance won’t get anyone out of this one.
What about media containment? The scientists laugh. Nope. Already the amateur astronomy boards are lighting up with people asking why they can’t see Neptune anymore. Several research fellows are objecting to the sudden cessation of telescope images from that section of sky, and multiple internet sites have already hit upon the black hole hypothesis.
Tracking stations are still refining data as news media sniff the story out. Accusations fly thick and fast at scientists for not predicting this ahead of time. The United Nations forms an emergency committee to come up with species continuity plans. Worldwide space agencies are temporarily formed into an alliance – if something, anything that can help can be built, it will be pushed into space.
The Black Hole, now nicknamed “Ragnarok” is under constant watch, and sufficient data is received over a few days for a course, speed and size to be determined.
The good news is that’s its relatively tiny – about 300 times the mass of the Earth. That’s almost improbably small for a self-sustaining black hole – it must be mere meters in diameter. That’s just the event horizon though. The gravitational effects are another matter. Already Jupiter itself is wobbling unusually.
The bad news is that its course is bringing it right towards Earth. The impact chance is one in 30,000, but that’s being refined down all the time. The probability footprint is one million kilometers wide, and Earth is sitting in the firing line.
Worldwide broadcasts attempt to convey the message to the general public in a calm manner. There will be a period of intense atmospheric effects, followed by violent storms and earthquakes. Then if all goes well, the effects should fade. There is an attempt to downplay the worst case scenarios, such as a direct impact or a sun-capture event, but the media seem to home in on these possibilities with an unholy glee.
There is a dramatic uptick in doomsday cults, as well as attendance to religious services, praying for deliverance. Mass looting and rioting break out in cities across America, Europe and Asia.
Shelters are devised in the American central states and the Russian steppes. Additional shelters are planned for West Africa, The Philippines, Argentina, California, South Africa and Switzerland, but only the South African and Swiss ones get started on. The others are deemed to be too close to major fault lines.
Riots intensify as the black hole is picked up entering the region of the Asteroid Belt. Despite the relative paucity of asteroids in the belt, telescopes observe multiple objects being dragged along behind Ragnarok. Even if Earth survives the black hole, there’s going to be one heck of a meteor storm afterwards. The media enters doomsday overload. News anchors seem unable to decide whether to throw up or interrogate talking heads on the most gruesome fates possible. Either way, ratings skyrocket.
Most of the civil disturbance is slowly ebbing, leaving trillions in destroyed property behind it, and the UN Special Commissioner on Black Hole Ragnarok is delighted to inform the world that the gravitational anomaly will NOT impact the planet. Earth is outside the refined footprint. The disturbance will slip past Earth at about 400 to 500 thousand kilometers in two months’ time.
Even better, the refined calculations indicate that the trajectory means the black hole will slingshot around the sun, and head back out into deep space at escape velocity. After this pass, it’s not coming back.
Worldwide lottery draws are made for locations inside the hastily constructed bunkers, although the chances of surviving in the bunker are only marginally higher than surviving outside it. Nevertheless, the lotteries break down and touch off additional riots when the first drawing of 500 tickets for the Kansas shelter just happens to include 450 of the richest people in America.
Ragnarok passes the orbit of Mars, towing hundreds of asteroids (and one unlucky space probe which is futilely still trying to auto-correct its way to Jupiter). The Red Planet is unaffected, being on the far side of the system.
Earth knuckles down and braces for the effects. Already they are being felt. Jet streams have shifted as high pressure air systems clog the side of the planet closest to Ragnarok. Extreme hurricane-class winds thrash exposed areas. Earthquakes are increasing, and tidal effects are being noticed – they no longer conform to lunar patterns, and moving ‘king tide’ is travelling east to west at over a thousand kilometers an hour.
Die-hard astronomers, enthusiasts and scientists are setting up shop in places like Peru, Antartica and Australia in the hope of getting some really good readings. There is a last minute mass push by panicking members of the public to get into the few completed shelters, which are already full to bursting. Strangely, the rationale across the entire pushing group is the same - there will be room for “just one more”.
With a shocking start, volcanoes begin blowing their tops as earthquakes rack every fault line over the globe. Taupo, New Zealand is ground zero as the entire North island vanishes into a super eruption. Yellowstone goes off in America, as well as old, thought-extinct calderas in Scotland, Yemen and Namibia. The San Andreas fault splits wide open, as the New Zealand Southern Alps unexpectedly rise nearly a hundred feet. Quakes rack India and Africa. Japan suffers multiple severe quakes and the associated tsunamis.
Reports of a movie director screaming “I told you so!” as disasters wreck Hollywood are largely unconfirmed.
Quakes, ash clouds and storms hammer across the planet. The gravitational pull of the black hole as it passes Earth is relatively weak in comparison to a full-blown black hole - this one has roughly the mass of Jupiter, but it's more than sufficient to inflict terrible, terrible damage.
Millions die in wreckage, landslips, tsunamis and cave-ins. Billions more will perish from lack of fresh water and food in the months to come.
Ragnarok is on and past the planet in an impossibly fast fifteen minutes. It's passage upsets the lunar orbit, altering it from a 28-day cycle to a 31-day one. Even at it's incredible distance, Ragnarok siphons off some of the atmosphere, and wrecks satellite orbits. The International Space Station has been abandoned in orbit, and at the moment of closest approach, it flexes and breaks apart.
The black hole is picking up more and more speed as it plunges towards the sun. The quakes and storms begin to lessen, but they will not fade fully for years, possibly decades to come. The first shelter-citizens re-emerge, battered and bruised but alive.
Modern civilization has been reduced to rubble, but some redoubts still survive. For instance, Moscow has many flattened buildings, but is still functioning. Phoenix, Arizona is similarly affected. Ulan Bator in Mongolia is almost untouched.
Other places, especially coastal ones have been devastated. New York and Washington are sunken ruins. Los Angeles is now two islands. Hong Kong is gone, and Bejing has suffered heavy damage. London is functional, but nothing above three stories remains standing.
Coastlines have forever altered. Volcanoes have clogged the atmosphere, bringing about the 'nuclear winter' effect. Centuries will pass before the Earth returns to the 'normal' of the 20th/21st centuries.
Ragnarok rounds the sun, and speeds off in the direction of the constellation Aquarius.
For all it's fury, Earth got off incredibly lightly. The micro black hole was nowhere near as powerful as Ragnarok's stellar cousins. One of those would have reduced the Earth to slag before it passed the asteroid belt. |