Twin Earth

About half an hour later we finally pulled into the large country estate that housed the Helix laboratory and we all sighed with relief.

“Thank god,” James whispered as he pulled up outside.

The Helix lab was an extraordinary place. Owned by a wealthy land owner with a passion for science, he had rented out a whole wing of his privately-owned stately home to various scientific institutes and companies over the years. It was a beautiful place, but very isolated, and in my opinion a little creepy this late in the evening in the pouring rain.

“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” I shouted, climbing out the car and pulling my jacket over my head.

We all clumsily ran towards the East wing of the large Georgian house and hurriedly followed my father through a tall conservatory style door and down a dimly lit corridor.

“What is this place?” Rachel whispered with a hint of uncertainty in her voice, wiping the rain from her face. I was already concluding she was a city girl at heart and not used to such rural locations.

“You will see,” my father smiled as he led us through another door and into a large room that looked very out of place with the history of the building. A futuristic looking lab greeted us, full of computers and technical equipment with transparent screens in the centre of the room currently displaying what I assumed to be the previous trajectory of the asteroid before it went AWOL. Even a telescope was located at the far end of the room, which would normally be looking out at the night sky if it wasn’t for the weather, but even so, I was in awe at all the technical gadgets hanging off it.

“This my friends, is the Helix lab,” my father stated proudly. “And this is Doctor Yamamoto. She is our head of particle physics at the Tokyo Aerospace Exploration Agency.”

“Pleased to meet you. You may call me Yuki,” the middle-aged and surprisingly tall lady replied, bowing slightly, but not smiling.

“Do you own this place?” Rachel asked.

Laughing my father replied, “oh no, we have investment interests in the facilities here, and use it from time to time. We have been lucky enough to be granted use to study the asteroid whilst in England.”

“Oh,” Rachel replied, clearly in awe and perhaps slightly jealous that her team at UCL didn’t have such privileges.

“I am glad you are here sir. There is something I would like you to see,” Yuki urged.

“Oh?” my father replied. “Have the probe scans come back already?”

“Yes. I started to receive some data about an hour ago. I tried to call you, but I could not connect to your phone?”

“We got lost,” James mumbled embarrassed.

“That does not surprise me. Our Earth’s magnetic field seems to be shifting. Our scientists are concerned it may reverse completely. Our navigational systems have all been affected.”

“Really?” my father replied.

“Is this something to worry about?” James asked.

“If it does completely reverse it will be for the first time in over 780,000 years,” Yuki replied.

“To be fair, we are overdue,” I added.

“It may mean we become more exposed to solar and cosmic radiation, but the biggest problem is the interference with our equipment, which we are already starting to experience, but that is not what I wanted to show you.”

“There’s more?” James asked nervously.

“Our probe has picked up something from around the anomaly, but I have run it through the computer and we cannot seem to make any sense of it.”

We all followed Yuki over to a nearby computer and tried to crowd around the charts she was now showing us.

“We have detected minute gravitational shifts by the remnants of the debris. Nothing is showing on the high definition camera in detail, but we have detected small amounts of the debris acting very strangely in these gravitational fluctuations.”

“Like sand dancing in a tornado?” I replied suddenly.

“Err, yes, you could say that,” Yuki replied confused.

“It sounds like what we have been experiencing with our meteorite samples. When I scattered the sand over the meteorite the particles would dance as if stuck in small magnetic pockets that were shifting constantly, but it dissipated over time. Annoyingly I couldn’t replicate it back in the lab when I got back from Morocco.”

“That does sound similar to what we have found,” Yuki replied with interest. “Where the smaller debris particles are, we can see this happening, but eventually the debris drifts off into space, as if cut loose from whatever was holding them in that fluctuation. Then nothing happens for a while and then the phenomena returns.”

“Do you think the asteroid picked up something when it hit this anomaly?” Rachel asked curiously.

“Our data does seem to suggest that this phenomenon is not coming from the asteroid itself, but rather whatever it hit.”

“This is fascinating,” my father mumbled as he flicked through the charts.

“We have some rough calculations of what debris has remained and how big the pieces are, and subsequently have a good estimate of their mass and size, however when we calculate all the matter we can see; the dust, the debris, even various gases surrounding that area, it doesn’t seem to add up to nearly enough gravity to cause these unusual fluctuations acting on these objects.”

“So, you’re suggesting there is a discrepancy with the mass out there?” I suggested.

“It would seem so,” Yuki replied.

“And we can’t see it?” Rachel asked.

“So what, dark matter?” James retorted in disbelief.

“It is something my colleagues and I have considered,” Yuki replied.

“But doesn’t dark matter only affect gravity on huge, galaxy sized systems?” Rachel asked.

“Not necessarily,” my father replied. “A simple reaction using atoms can be formulated in the lab to try and detect it. We’ve been attempting this for years, but with no success.”

“And the Large Hadron Collider has even been trying to create it from scratch,” I added.

“Indeed,” my father agreed.

“If dark matter is not causing these unusual fluctuations, what else could it be?” I replied.

“But it’s fluctuating. Does dark matter even do that?” James asked.

“No-one really knows ultimately,” my father answered.

“Okay, say you’re right. Say this anomaly is a huge lump of dark matter, jumping around, having fun and we just can’t see it other than its effect on the asteroid debris and these weird gravitational fluctuations causing sand to dance around on the meteorite. What’s caused it? Why is it there?” James asked, but before anyone could reply our attention was caught by the equipment around us vibrating and Yuki having to run to stop some glass tubes from smashing onto the floor.

“An earthquake?” Rachel asked stunned. “In England?”