Chapter 12 Chapter 9: The Authenticity of Meteorites

No sooner had she hung up than Marjorie Tench called NASA Administrator Ekstrom.She spoke nervously as she relayed the bad news. "Pickering is a tough guy." Standing at Yolanda Kerr's desk in the ABC studios, Gabrielle Ash dialed a phone number with renewed hope. The statement Sexton had just conveyed to her would have been appalling if it had been confirmed.NASA Lied About Polar Orbiting Density Scanning Satellites?A few weeks ago, polar orbit density scanning satellites were not a major problem.But tonight, it became such a crucial issue. Gabrielle called Dr. Harper's home and learned from Mrs. Harper that Dr. Chris Harper had gone to the headquarters of NASA.

Rachel's question was deceptive, but as an analytical exercise the method proved effective.Putting aside all the data that had been presented to him upon his arrival in Sojourner, Tolland had to admit that his analysis of the fossil had been greatly misguided by a single assumption, that the rock containing the fossil was a meteorite. "So," repeated Rachel, her voice strained, "Mike, you're saying that if someone handed you this fossilized rock without any explanation, you might conclude that it's from Earth. rock." "Of course," Tolland replied.After all, scientists and scientists discover dozens of new earth creatures every year.However, in Koki's view, there would be no such large insects on Earth. Such insects have exoskeletons, and the gravity of the earth hinders their evolution.Tolland took a different view.

"Water is a low-gravity environment," Toland explained. "Everything weighs less in water. The ocean supports a lot of huge and fragile creatures that would never survive on land-jellyfish, huge Calamari, banded eels." In addition, there are indeed 190 million-year-old sections of the sea floor on the earth, which are exactly the same as the age of the fossils.In theory, the ocean could support creatures that look like this stuff. Corky was unconvinced by Tolan's explanation.To confirm the meteorite's authenticity, he raised the issue of fusion crusts, unusual nickel content and chondrules, none of which could be faked.

"This nickel content thing," Rachel said to Corky, "explain it to me again. The nickel content in rocks on Earth is neither too high nor too low, but in meteorites, the nickel content But the content is within a specific medium range?" Keji nodded frequently, and said, "Indeed." "It would appear that the nickel content in this specimen is just within the expected range." "Very close, yes." Rachel looked surprised. "Wait a minute. Close? How?" Corky looked annoyed, "As I explained earlier, all meteorite minerals are different. As scientists discover new meteorites, we have to go by what we think is acceptable nickel content for meteorites, from time to time. Update calculation results."

Rachel picked up the specimen and looked shocked. "So this meteorite has forced you to reevaluate what you consider to be an acceptable nickel content? Is this meteorite not within the established range of medium nickel content?" "Just a little off," Corky retorted. "Why hasn't anyone mentioned this?" "It's not a big deal. Astrophysics is a dynamic discipline, and people are constantly feeding it with new information." "When doing an extremely important analysis report?" "Well," said Corky puffed up, "I can assure you that the nickel content in that specimen is pretty close to that of other meteorites, not any rock on Earth."

Rachel turned to Tolland and asked, "Did you know about this before?" Tolland nodded reluctantly.That didn't seem to matter at the time. "I was told that this meteorite was slightly higher in nickel than other meteorites that people had seen, but the experts at NASA didn't seem to care about that." "Plausible!" interjected Corky, "the mineralogical evidence is not that the nickel content is really meteorite-like, but that it is really not like terrestrial rock." Rachel shook her head, "Sorry, that's a fatally flawed logic in my line of work. Saying a rock doesn't look like something from Earth doesn't prove it's a meteorite. It's different from anything humans have ever seen on Earth."

"What difference does it make!" "It wouldn't make a difference," Rachel said, "if you'd seen all the rocks on Earth." Corky was silent for a moment. "Well," he said finally, "if the nickel content bothers you, forget it. We still have uncracked fusion crusts and chondrules." "Indeed," Rachel said, sounding unimpressed, "two-thirds of the evidence isn't bad." Even though it was late at night, Gabrielle was not surprised to see the lobby of NASA headquarters packed.She hurried in, scanning the crowd, but couldn't spot anyone who looked like Chris Harper, the mission chief for the Polar Density Scan Satellite.Half the people in the hall wore press passes, and the other half wore NASA photo IDs around their necks.Gabrielle has neither.She spotted a young woman with a NASA ID card, from whom she learned that Dr. Harper was upstairs.

Gabrielle came to the elevator entrance, only to find that these elevators used security controls-to be opened with a password card ID card, and only employees could enter and exit. A group of young people hurried towards the elevator, chatting cheerfully.They all wore NASA photo IDs around their necks.Gabrielle quickly bent down beside the drinking fountain, looking back.A man with acne on his face inserted his ID card into the slot to open the elevator.He laughed and shook his head in surprise. "The guys in the extraterrestrial civilization exploration department will definitely go crazy!" He said when everyone entered the elevator, "Their long-horned car has tracked the drift field for twenty years in less than two hundred millimeters, but The physical evidence has been buried in the ice on the earth from beginning to end!"

The elevator doors closed and the group disappeared. Immediately afterwards, a slender, bald man appeared around the corner and hurried towards the elevator.When the elevator door was about to close slowly, Gabrielle rushed into the elevator, and used the conversation of the NASA staff just now to fool the man's eyes, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Zach Hurney sipped celebratory champagne with some senior officials in the Roosevelt Room, while watching looping reruns of press conferences, excerpts from Tolan's documentary and recaps from experts broadcast by the network.The television feed switched to a rerun of the now-infamous debate on CNN earlier that day.

"Thirty-five years on," Sexton asserted, "I don't think we're going to find extraterrestrial life, it's so obvious!" "But what if you're wrong?" Marjorie Tench replied. Sexton rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, for God's sake, Ms. Tench, if I'm wrong I'll have my head off." Everyone in the Roosevelt room burst out laughing.The President looked around the room, but Tench was nowhere to be seen. With so much change in a single day, the president thought, in politics, the world can change in an instant. By daybreak, the president will realize how true that statement was.

Pickering was a formidable man.Tench said so. Over the past few hours, countless problems have arisen, and Ekstrom has tried his best to solve them.But the problems looming now are bigger than all the others put together. Pickering was a formidable man. The last person in the world that Extron could think of with whom he would not quarrel with wits was William Pickering.Pickering has been bullying Extron and NASA for years now, trying to run classified programs, trying to advance other space operations, and complaining about NASA's ever-increasing failure rate. Extron sat at his desk with his head in his hands.He has to make some decisions.What would Pickering do with the information he had?Will he let it be, or make NASA pay for their mistakes? Extron's face darkened, and he was almost certain of what Pickering would do. After all, William Pickering had a more serious dispute with NASA...a long-standing personal feud that goes far deeper than a political disagreement. As the G-4 flew south along the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, Rachel was silent now, staring blankly at the cabin.Tolland sat nearby talking to Corky.Although most of the evidence pointed to the authenticity of the meteorite, Corky's admission that the nickel content was "not within the pre-established medium range" rekindled Rachel's initial suspicions.The surreptitious placement of a meteorite under the ice is only plausible if viewed as a hoax conceived by some wise man. Rachel looked away from the window, and glanced down at the disc-shaped meteorite specimen in her hand.She inspected the fusion shell carefully, and suddenly a strange idea popped into her mind-an obvious data was missed. Rachel suddenly asked Corky, "Has anyone dated the crust, that is, do we know for sure that the scorching of the rock happened at exactly the same time as the fall of Jong Sol?" "Sorry," said Corky, "the fusion crust cannot be dated. Oxidation has reordered all the necessary isotopic labels. Besides, radioactive isotopes decay too slowly to date anything less than five hundred years old. .” Rachel thought about the previous words for a long time, and now she understood the reason why the fusion crust age was not included in those data.Corky told Rachel that the meteorite's fusion crust couldn't have been fired in a furnace, and one of the reasons it was so clean.Tolland told her that the fusion shell could not see any remnants of fuel under the electron microscope, so its heating was caused by kinetic energy and friction, not chemical or nuclear materials. "If you didn't find any unusual fuel composition, what did you find? Specifically, what is the composition of the fusion crust?" "What we found," Corky said, "was exactly what we expected. It was pure atmospheric composition, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, no oil, no sulfur, no volcanic acid, nothing in particular, we just saw Meteors streak through material falling through the atmosphere." Rachel leaned back in her chair, deep in thought.Suddenly, a faint light flashed across her mind. "Are the atmospheric composition ratios you're seeing," she said, "exactly the same as all the other fusion-crusted meteorites you've seen?" Corky seemed a bit evasive about the question: "Why are you asking that?" Rachel saw his hesitation and felt her heart beat faster: "Those ratios aren't right, are they?" "There is a scientific explanation." Rachel's chest was thumping suddenly at this moment, "Maybe you have discovered which ingredient has an abnormally high content?" Tolland and Corky looked at each other in shock. "Yes," said Corky, "but—" "Is it hydrogen ions?" The astrophysicist's eyes widened: "How could you possibly know that!" Tolland looked equally astonished. Rachel stared at the two of them and asked, "Why hasn't anyone mentioned this to me?" "Because there's a perfectly plausible scientific explanation!" Corky asserted. "I'm all ears," Rachel said. "The excess of hydrogen ions," Corky said, "is due to the meteor passing through the atmosphere near the North Pole, where the Earth's magnetic field creates an unusually high concentration of hydrogen ions." Rachel frowned and said, "Unfortunately, I have another explanation." The fourth floor of NASA headquarters is less exciting than the lobby—a long, dreary corridor with office doors equidistant from the walls.There was no one in the corridor, and Gabrielle followed the signs to look for the polar-orbiting density-scanning satellites.She twisted and turned through corridors and forks, and came to a set of heavy iron doors.The above text reads: Polar Orbiting Density Scanning Satellite Head of Department, Chris Harper She cleverly sneaked into Dr. Harper's office. "How did you get here?" Gabrielle's face was stern: "Do you know who I am?" "Of course. Your superiors have been critical of my plans for months. How did you get in?" "Senator Sexton sent me." Harper scanned the laboratory behind Gabrielle: "Where is the person who came with you?" "It's none of your business. Senators have hard relationships." "In this building?" Harper looked suspicious. "You're dishonest, Dr. Harper. I'm afraid Senator Sexton has summoned a special committee of senators to investigate the lies you have told." Harper had a gloomy expression on his face, still pretending to be crazy. Gabrielle took a deep breath, and struck out. "You lied about the anomaly detection program on the PoDs satellite at your press conference. I know about that, and a lot of people know about it. That's not the point." Before Harper could defend himself , Gabrielle quickly continued, "Senator Sexton can expose your lies now, but he has no interest. He is obsessed with bigger news subjects. I think you understand what I'm talking about. " Gabrielle told Harper that Sexton made him an offer to keep silent about Harper's procedural issues as long as he named the senior NASA executive who had embezzled money with him. God told a lie. For a moment, Chris Harper seemed baffled: "What did you say? I didn't embezzle!" "I advise you to pay attention to what you say, sir. A committee of senators has been gathering documentary evidence for months now. Do you really think you two can slip away by hiding? Faking the work of the Polar Orbiting Density Scan Satellite Reporting, and diverting funds allocated to NASA into private accounts? Lying and embezzlement can land you in jail, Dr. Harper." "I've never done anything like that!" "Are you saying you didn't lie about the polar-orbiting density-scanning satellite?" "No, I mean there was no embezzlement!" "So you're saying you lied about the polar-orbiting density-scanning satellites." Harper's eyes widened, apparently at a loss for words. "Let's forget about the lying," Gabrielle said, waving her hand and refusing to talk about it. "Senator Sexton is not interested in your lying at the press conference. We don't care about that. It's commonplace. Your guys found a meteorite. No one cares how you found it. His focus is on corruption. He's going to have to piss off some high-ups at NASA. Just tell him who you are If you’re an accomplice, he’ll avoid you entirely and investigate. You can safely tell us who the other guy is, or the Senator will blow things up and start talking about anomaly detection procedures and fictional workarounds.” "You're bluffing. There's no such thing as embezzlement." "You're a terrible liar, Dr. Harper. I've seen the documentary evidence. Your name is on all the charging papers, over and over and over again." "I swear I don't know anything about embezzlement!" Gabrielle sighed in disappointment. "Put yourself in my shoes, Dr. Harper. I can only come to two conclusions on this matter: Either you lied to me, as if you were Press conferences; or you told the truth and someone powerful at NASA framed you for their own mistakes and used you as a scapegoat." The statement seemed to give Harper pause. Gabrielle looked at her watch. "The Senator's deal is valid for an hour. You can save yourself by giving him the name of the NASA executive who is with you in embezzling taxpayer money. The Senator is not interested in you, he wants to catch a big fish. This person obviously has some power in NASA now, and he or she has managed to shield himself from the paper investigation and wants you to be the scapegoat." Harper shook his head: "You're lying." "Would you like to say that in court?" "Of course, I'm willing to deny everything." "Dare you swear?" Gabrielle grunted in disgust. "Do you want to deny the lie you told about the procedures for patching the polar density scan satellite?" Gabrielle looked straight at him, her chest pounding. Jump straight up, "Carefully decide how to choose on this issue, Dr. Harper. America's prisons are the most annoying places." Harper glared at her, too, and Gabrielle wished he would give in.For a moment Gabrielle thought she saw vaguely that he was backing down, but when Harper spoke it was steely. "Ms. Ash," he said decisively, with anger in his eyes, "you're trying to seize something that's not there. You and I both know there's no embezzlement at NASA. The only thing in the room is You are the one who lied." Gabrielle felt her body go stiff.Harper's gaze was angry and severe.Gabrielle wanted to turn and run.You also try to put on a show to fool a top scientist.What are you going to do?Gabrielle braced herself and held her head high. "All I know," she said, with an air of supreme confidence and indifference to his situation, "is that I've seen the charging papers, the very convincing evidence that you and another person embezzled NASA funds. .The senator called me tonight just to give you the option to give up your associates instead of facing the investigation alone.I will tell the senator that you would rather try your luck with a judge.You can find it at Tell the court what you told me—you neither embezzled public funds, nor lied about the procedure of the polar orbit density scanning satellite." She smiled coldly, "But after watching you two weeks ago After the botched press conference I had, I was somehow skeptical." Gabrielle turned around and strode through the pitch-black Polar Density Scan Satellite Division laboratory.She wondered if she might be the one in jail, not Harper. Gabrielle walked away with her head held high, expecting Harper to call her back.There was silence all around.She squeezed through the metal door and stalked out into the hallway, hoping the elevator up ahead didn't require a code card to open like the one in the lobby.She failed.Despite her best efforts, Harper was not fooled.Maybe he was telling the truth at the press conference about the PoDs satellite, Gabrielle thought. The metal door jerked open behind her, and a clang echoed down the corridor. "Ms. Ash," cried Harper, "I swear I know nothing about embezzlement. I'm an honest man!" Gabrielle felt her heart stop.She restrained herself, continued to walk forward, shrugged coldly, turned her head and shouted: "But you lied at the press conference." There was a silence.Gabrielle continued down the corridor. "Wait!" Harper screamed.He trotted up to Gabrielle, looking pale. "This embezzlement matter," he said, lowering his voice, "I think I know who set me up." Gabrielle stopped immediately, thinking about whether she had heard wrongly.She turned around as slowly and nonchalantly as possible, "You want me to believe that someone set you up?" Harper sighed. "I swear I don't know anything about embezzlement. But if there is any evidence against me..." "Piles of evidence."