Lachlan grinned. Jason could see the professor knew what he was getting at. He continued, saying, “It took Newton to rethink the notion and realize that the Moon was falling just like an apple from a tree. The only difference was, the Moon missed! Newton’s apple fell and hit the earth, but the Moon kept on missing. It was an extraordinary insight!”
“Yes,” Lachlan said. “Yes it was.”
Jason could see the knowing smile on Lachlan’s face. None of this was news to him, but like all scientists, he never tired of hearing it re-couched by an inquiring mind.
“In the same way, think about dark energy,” Jason added. “We don’t know what dark energy is, but we know it drives the expansion of the universe. The problem is, we’re again looking at space as though it were a cohesive element in itself. It’s not. There’s no such thing as space, there’s only space-time. You cannot separate space from time. Dark energy is driving the expansion of space-time. The Big Rip affects not only space but time as well.
“What if dark energy is the impeller, the impetus for the arrow of time? What if dark energy is what drives time in a single direction within our hidden quantum dimensions? Sending it forwards instead of backwards.”
Professor Lachlan leaned forward on his knees, holding Jason’s paper before him, his eyes locked on the hastily scribbled equations.
Jason wasn’t finished. He loved how the professor heard him out rather than shooting him down in flames. He appreciated Lachlan’s willingness to provide him with the latitude to think broadly. He was probably wrong, and he knew it, but even just having the chance to think out loud helped to solidify more ideas.
“What would you say if I said I could propel a mass the size of Earth to 99% of the speed of light?”
That got the professor to look up from the paper.
“I’d be seriously impressed,” the professor admitted. “But the amount of energy required would be astronomical.”
“Exactly,” Jason replied. “And that’s my point, as Earth is already traveling through space at 99% of the speed of light due largely to dark energy.”
Lachlan raised an eyebrow, but he let Jason keep speaking.
“We’re orbiting the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. That’s like traveling from New York to LA in three minutes.
“And the Sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way, and our galaxy as a whole is spinning at the dizzying speed of almost half a million miles an hour. That’s what? A flight-time of twenty seconds to get to LA?
“You see, the issue is whenever we think of accelerating any mass to a significant fraction of the speed of light, we assume we’re starting with some kind of absolute rest, but we’re not. Our local group of galaxies is plunging toward the heart of the Virgo cluster at over a million miles an hour. Due to the expansion of the universe, there are distant galaxies receding from us at 99% of the speed of light, but again that assumes we’re stationary. We’re not. We have no reason to think of ourselves as special, as being at rest relative to the universe. It’s equally true to say these other galaxies are stationary and we’re the ones that are racing off at 99% of the speed of light.”
“Where are you going with this?” the professor asked.
“Ah,” Jason replied, trying not to get too excited. “Everyone’s obsessed with the speed of light. They want spaceships that can go faster than the speed of light. They look for wormholes and warp drives to bridge the vast distances that surround us, but they’re looking for advances in all the wrong areas. The whole notion of traveling faster than the speed of light is bogus. Light is ALWAYS going to travel 299,792 kilometers per hour faster than us, regardless of our speed. And so the notion of speed is meaningless when it comes to light. My point is, we’ve asked the wrong question. We don’t need to go faster than the speed of light.”
Professor Lachlan smiled. Jason could see he understood where his reasoning was leading.
“Think about the speedometer in a car. Miles per hour,” Jason added. “Speed is distance travelled over time taken. Manipulate time and you can go anywhere you like regardless of the distance as it will take you no time at all!”
“Ha!” Lachlan cried. “So these equations are to manipulate dark energy in quantum dimensions, they’re…”
The professor’s voice trailed off, lost in thought.
Jason finished his sentence.
“Calculations for time travel!”
Lachlan looked around, his eyes darting from side to side as he spoke, although in the narrow, cramped confines of the anteroom between the lecture halls, there was no way for anyone to be watching them.
“You cannot tell anyone about this, do you understand?”
The intensity in Lachlan’s voice took Jason by surprise. Lachlan leaned forward, emphasizing his point.
“I need some time to verify your calculations, to think about the math. You must trust me on this. Not a word of this to anyone.”
“OK, sure,” Jason replied, not thinking his wacky theory was that big a deal. From his perspective, it was largely conjecture, and the energy requirements to make the concept a practical reality were horrendous. His initial estimates were that a journey of just a few minutes back through time would require the equivalent of the entire output of the Sun over its lifespan of roughly seven billion years! It wasn’t like anyone was going to come up with an energizer bunny with enough juice to test his theory anytime soon. He understood there were probably errors in his assumptions, but even so, the energy requirements weren’t likely to be fulfilled by anything that could be found on Earth.
“This is important,” Lachlan continued. “I need you to keep this between you and me for now. There will come a time when we can go public with this, but for now you can’t tell anyone, not even your closest friend.”
He wouldn’t believe me anyway, Jason thought, then he mentally corrected himself. Actually, Mitchell would believe him. He’d believe anything weird. Jason tried not to smile at the thought and struggled not to grin. Lachlan looked stern, he must have seen the subtle twitches, the telltale signs of Jason suppressing his instinctive reaction.
Jason wondered what Lachlan was thinking. The professor couldn’t have known the zany sequence of thoughts that had flashed through his mind. Lachlan probably thought Jason was a little embarrassed.
“What you’ve done here is important,” Lachlan said. “I need some time to verify the logic. I need you to sit on this for the next day or so. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.”
Jason’s phone beeped as another message flashed on the lock screen.
From Helena: Lily’s freaking out! I’m taking her back to your pad.
“I… ah,” Jason began, signaling to his phone.
“Yes, yes,” Lachlan replied, flipping back through the papers. “You can go.”
Jason stood and the professor rolled his chair to one side. There was just enough room for Jason to squeeze through beside him if he sucked in as he shimmied past. The professor wasn’t going anywhere. He’d turned on his computer and had a pen out, numbering the back of each page. Jason observed that he was deliberate in his actions, checking against the numbers printed on the front of each page to ensure he had Jason’s calculations in order.
Jason tiptoed as he squeezed past. He turned and looked back at the professor. The old man was engrossed in Jason’s scribbles. How bizarre, he thought, Lachlan barely looked at his actual assignment. Up until then, the assignment had been such a big deal, it had been the reason the two of them had come into the university on a holiday, and now it was sidelined. Knowing Lachlan, Jason ruefully expected the professor would commend him for his speculative work and still flunk him on his paper.