Backstories: "Signal to Noise" (2022)

Plant: Drosera adelae

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

A standard physics thought experiment: the gravity well around a black hole is so tremendous that matter or energy cannot escape, but information could possibly escape. The unspoken implication: what kind of information? Merely information about the conditions inside a black hole’s gravity well, or something else?

For most physics students and teachers, the implication is purely academic, but somebody tried to make it concrete. Approximately 2 billion years ago, thousands of specialized sensors were placed through one specific area of space to search for any information that might slip out of a collapsar’s gravity well. Gravity waves and galactic expansion led to their being spread reasonably evenly through the galaxy, with most of them nonfunctional or at least powered down and dormant. A significant number, though, recalibrated themselves and started spying on the biggest target available: the gigantic black hole at the center of our galaxy. The original target black hole still circles the galactic core, with about twenty sensors still following it through space and time, still functioning and still sending random broadcasts of standard radio through wormholes to an unknown destination. The sensors circling the core also broadcast via microsecond-generated wormholes, but whether they send their results to the same location or to a new destination is completely unknown.

What information, if any, that came out of the original target black hole is also completely unknown. Whatever happened, the sensors’ designers suddenly evacuated this galaxy and in fact this general area of the universe, cleaning up after themselves so thoroughly that the only traces left were accidents, like papers sliding under a cabinet. Only the sensors remained, suggesting that their purpose was to continue to monitor the target black hole if in case more information escaped. What they continued to detect, and if anything comparable comes from the black hole in the galactic core, remains one of the great mysteries of the known universe, and a mystery that many experts question should be solved if the sensors’ creators responded in such a fashion.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Backstories and Fragments Signal to Noise