Author #1
Hey Jen,
This email’s been rotting in my “Drafts” tab for a few hours now. If you’re reading this, I’ve gotten brave and/or drunk enough to finally send it. Sorry about that. You’re probably going to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am, but I’m probably not the dangerous kind, I guess. Anyway. I’ve tried to minimize the jargon and make things as clear as I can, but… well, there’s a lot. If you have a question, please do ask.
The Portland University Radio Telescope Array is a beast of a thing. Back in the mid-late oughts, it was the thing every researcher wanted to get observation time on, and even today it’s still a hell of a machine. Submillimeter, and almost as sensitive as the ALMA, and of course the big advantage to the PURTA is that it’s not out in the Chilean desert. We were very lucky to get time on it in the first place. Of course, Dr. Gutierrez worked their ass off, nights, weekends, holidays, everything; Dr. Champlain (You probably don’t remember, but I think you met him once. At that dinner in New Haven, maybe?) was still teaching students, running the department, and getting ready for a baby on the way; and I did my bit too. Anything to get the proposal finished and approved by the board.
Our project involved looking at a star system called 55 Cancri. It’s a binary star system, 55 Cancri A being a little smaller than our sun, 55 Cancri B being much smaller. Cancri A has at least five planets (Cancri ab, c, d, e, and f. They also have shiny new official planet names, but it’s a PITA to write Harriot, Lipperhey, Janssen, etc. when the letters will do) orbiting around it. Cancri A is interesting because it’s rich in a lot of metal and some other astronomers have capital-T Theories about that and it has implications for a lot of boring computational models, etc, etc, but we were focused in on Cancri B. The thing about Cancri B is that it may actually be two stars that are really close together, and our goal was to determine whether or not it was.
So the 7th comes and I head up to the array to do our observing run. The thing is that our observations seemed to indicate that there were in fact two stars. Well, they did for the first five days. Then, suddenly, the area of Cancri B emitted a whole lot more radio waves than any star its size should for around ten minutes and afterwards, there was only evidence of one star in the vicinity of 55 Cancri B. The equipment seems to have been working fine. Our processes seemed sound. There’s no known natural phenomenon that I can think of that would explain any of this. I can’t publish this and I’ll never prove it, but I’m about as sure as I can be that, around forty years ago, something out there ate a star.
I’m sitting here in this little motel up in the hills at 2:30 in the morning eating eye-gougingly expensive minibar pretzels with a draft of another email going right next to this one, addressed to Dr. Gutierrez and Dr. Champlain, and I have no idea what to write, what to say, what to think even. My guess is that we’ll end up writing another proposal, going up for another observing run, find that, whatever it may have been before, it seems to be one star right now, and end up shrugging our collective shoulders over the whole thing like we did with the Wow! Signal or Oumuamua.
The really scary thing is that back in 2003, we sent a radio transmission to 55 Cancri. It’ll get there in 2044. Of course, next to the incomprehensible vastness of the void of space, we’re just a mere speck, etc, and if there is something out there there’s no guarantee it’ll care about us one way or the other, understand our signal, or even be there when the transmission arrives. But I can’t help but keep thinking about the Fermi Paradox…
Look, I really need you to keep quiet on this for a while. I’m up for tenure next year and I can’t afford anybody thinking I’m a crackpot before then or before we decide what to do with the paper. I’m sorry to load you with all this stuff. I just had to tell someone, you know.
But (strange tonal switch alert! Sorry. It's been that kind of night) how are you? It’s been way too long since we’ve caught up (and I’m so sorry about that, my fault entirely). How are your courses going? You have the usual number of sophomores that are way too into Derrida for their own good this year? And congratulations on the anniversary! Twelve years is amazing!
Much love,
Sam