Most recent edit on 2007-05-09 20:50:37 by BaxilDragon [Initial revision]
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The Missing Moment
After TheChanges, practically everyone agreed that The First Sighting was the first proof of anything strange happening to Earth. Countless claims of earlier transformations, magic, or supernatural sightings were made, but evidence for them was always suspiciously lacking. Then, in February 1997, astronomers came to the electrifying conclusion that, two days before The First Sighting, Earth had experienced a hiccup that caused the whole planet to lose approximately two-thirds of a second.
Date: Monday, Dec. 16, 1996
Location: n/a
For several months after Dec. 16, nobody had any reason to suspect that anything odd had occurred that day. Then, in February, German astronomer Stefan Schneider tried to track down the source of a small anomaly in his data (a short period in the regular rhythm of a pulsar the Effelsberg Radio Telescope was observing over time). Schneider cross-referenced that Dec. 16 oddity against a similar pulsar being observed by the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, only to see the same hiccup at the same time. Curious, he called observatories worldwide, to find that the glitch they had all independently ignored or written off as a mechanical failure was mirrored in data worldwide, no matter what they were observing at the time.
The data was consistent with what results would have been expected if the observations had all been paused for approximately 2/3 of a second. However, nothing seemed mechanically wrong with any of the telescopes, and for all of them to fail for the same precise length of time (but no clocks, computers, etc.) defied simple explanation. The most reasonable conclusion was that somehow, Earth had lost that 2/3 of a second.
The missing time was subsequently confirmed by very precise astronomical observations. It had to be confirmed that way because there was no local evidence for it. Everything on Earth seemed to be affected equally. People didn't notice any delay; clocks didn't stop; CDs didn't skip. Life just went on, as normal, except that the rest of the universe got to go on for 2/3 of a second that Earth didn't.
The cause of this missing time remains resolutely unknown. Any number of supernatural explanations have been proposed, but they all seem slightly awkward in view of the fact that at least 48 more hours would pass before the First Sighting confirmed Earth's new capabilities, and that nobody bothered to mention The Missing Moment in their theories of TheChanges until after news of it broke in February.
Verified Observations
TTU astronomers have confirmed the following pieces of data:
- Time on Earth appears to have been completely frozen for 2/3 of a second while the universe continued on without it. For example, pulsars under observation changed state 2/3 of a second earlier than expected during the period containing The Missing Moment. Nobody on Earth had any sensation of lost time (at least, nobody reported it until after news of the astronomical observations broke); all clocks and computers were also frozen for the duration (and thus stayed in sync with human observation); and no objects appeared to have been affected by (e.g.) gravity for the missing 2/3 of a second (again, staying in sync with human observation).
- The Earth and everything in its orbit -- both natural and artificial -- appear to have all been affected equally. No data was lost from orbiting satellites. Careful measurement of the moon fails to show the angular shift observed in other celestial bodies (which would be much more dramatic for the moon, being much closer).
- Later observations of parallax∞ suggested that Earth did not move in its regular orbit during The Missing Moment -- it shifted a tiny bit from its expected position. (Such a small amount that the viewing angle to our closest neighbor, Venus, at its closest approach, would have changed by less than one-thousandth of an arc-second. This is roughly the width of a human hair held by someone standing a hundred miles away.) Not enough data was collected at the time to conclusively state how Earth's orbit was affected, but a rough consensus developed among astronomers that it did change, and that it didn't change consistent with coming to a complete stop while time was frozen. The leading theory is that Earth continued to move on pure momentum, but didn't gravitationally interact with the rest of the solar system, during that 2/3 of a second; that would put it about 4 miles from its expected position (as opposed to 12 miles off, had it frozen in space as well as time).
At the time of The Missing Moment, nobody noticed anything suspicious; the changes were too subtle for direct observation. It wasn't until months later that the event was even verified.
Predictably, that news ignited another wave of claims of strange happenings and physical shifts supposedly seen before The First Sighting. Such claimants were again largely dismissed as publicity seekers.
For most people, The Missing Moment would turn out to be just a curiosity -- it was too abstract and mathematical to worry about at a time when any TV channel could show raw magic on the 10 o'clock news. But while it would largely be ignored, it wouldn't be forgotten. Astronomers had to spend a great deal of time adjusting their calculations and December data accordingly, and conspiracy theorists found plenty of room for idle speculation. And the question of whether The First Sighting or The Missing Moment were more responsible for starting TheChanges would also persist.
- 11:23:58 AM GMT, Dec. 16, 1996: The Missing Moment.
- Feb. 14, 1997: Schneider announces his preliminary finding of a Dec. 16 worldwide astronomical aberration.
- Feb. 16, 1997: After confirming the aberration and starting to measure its size, astronomers first put forward the theory of a time hiccup.
- Also see: http://www.tomorrowlands.org/journal.cgi?date=11222002∞
There has been some speculation (inside TTU) based on the fact that the event occurred at 11:23 and 58 seconds Greenwich Mean Time -- while the clock was showing the initial digits of the Fibonacci sequence∞. However, this is largely written off as coincidence among people who have given the issue more than casual study ... especially since the sequence does not continue. The event appears to have occurred slightly closer to 11:23:59 than 11:23:58, which means that it could not have occurred at either 11:23:58.13 (13/100 of a second) or 11:23:58'13" (13/60 of a second).
All figures are given to the maximum precision available within TTU -- sometimes even beyond known precision into best-guess range. Had astronomers known it was coming, they could have arranged observations that offered much better accuracy; as it is, they had to make do with what data was in the process of being collected at the time, much of which was useless for determining details of the skip.
Inside TTU, The Missing Moment is largely the province of specialists and conspiracy theorists. By March 1997, the fact of its existence is open knowledge, but very few people see much significance in it -- certainly nothing as dramatic as a dragon walking down the street two days later. Most see it as self-evidently connected with TheChanges somehow, but the causality of it is pure guesswork.
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