Backstory

Scene One

Origins of the Story

Here is my backstory for “Passing Acquaintance.”

Sagittarius has a lot of gas and dust that obscures the mayhem screaming down into the Milky Way.  Beyond the covering clouds the ruminants of galaxy Ursula Major 2 plunge in at 500 kilometers per second.  This is the fifth trip for UM2 into its doom.  Tidal forces have strung out its stellar contents into a long tail tracing out almost its entire orbit.  It would appear as an edge ward view of a ring, a quarter as long as the Milky Way, if the clouds weren’t there.

But they are there, blotting out all the light above infrared, and postponing our ability to detect the inhabitants of several of the stars being redirected by our galaxy.

The destruction of UM2 is only of astronomical interest.  Few stars of either galaxy actually collide; they merely realign their paths through space, taking their retinue of planets, comets, moons, and space debris with them.

The inhabitants of UM2-31 are an old race evolving from their primate ancestors over half a billion years ago.  They have advanced to inhabit their solar system of four rocky planets and three gas giants and a few of the stars near by.  Not living directly on the larger planets, but living on twenty or more natural moons and hundreds of artificial satellites they have built around them.

They have even sent emissaries of their collected species to more distant stars of UM2 where they have established colonies and developed new branches of life.  But they have not overcome the limitation of travel beyond the speed of light.  It has taken them millions of years to populate only a small part of their galaxy.  But now, that galaxy is being ripped apart and they can do very little about it.

The first detectable intelligent emissions came from one of those outpost stars as it slowly emerged from behind the Sagittarius veil.  It was 300 ly away and traveling through the Milky Way galactic disk at a significant percent of light speed.

They detected us long before we them.  But, since we were 300 years away, they couldn’t ‘converse’ with us.  And, since our relative speeds were significant, sending emissaries to us was moot.

All either of us could do was study the emissions and send greetings that would take a 600 year round trip.

This is a story of the pioneers who detected UM2-31 and the problems they encountered.  And... the aliens' sacrifice for us.

Pages:    2
Words:  419

EndNotes:

Science News References:
Cowen R.  2009.  Alien Visitors From Afar - Nearby star may have an extragalactic lineage.  Science News 176(July 4): 9.  Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/44574/title/Alien_visitor_from_afar_

Cowen R.  2003.  Alien Stars Pass Close to Home. Science News Online.  Science News 164(Dec 13): 24.  Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/4518/title/Alien_stars_pass_close_to_...

Cowen, R.  2003.  Chow down! Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor.  Science News 164(Nov. 15):307.  Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/4434/title/Chow_Down!_Milky_Way_gobbles_its_closest_known_neighbor

Further Readings:
Majewski,, S.R., et al. In press.  A 2MASS all-sky view of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy: I. Morphology of the Sagittarius core and tidal arms.  Astrophysical Journal.  Preprint available at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0304198.

2003.  New map of the Milky Way shows our galaxy to be a cannibal. University of Virginia press release.  Sept. 24.  Available at http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/.

Sources:
Steven R. Majewski
University of Virginia
Department of Astronomy
P.O. Box 3818
Charlottesville, VA 22903-0818