moteOfDust

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Safe

Status: Draft

This is an initial draft report on our findings of this new artifact. Research continues, however due to the high cost of the research facilities, this report must be filed as part of a financial allocation request for additional equipment and personnel.

Special Containment Procedures: The artifact is currently situated in space in sector 03-06-DR (approximately 1.3 degrees above the ecliptic, in the asteroid belt). It is not moving in an orbit around the sun, it appears stationary relative to the background stars of the galaxy. Despite this, and an apparent complete lack of any propulsion mechanism, it does not "fall" towards the sun under gravity. Foundation research equipment must maintain fuel and propulsion system thrust to maintain proximity to the object, since equipment will begin falling inwards under the sun's gravitational pull. Despite the extremely important implications of the nature of this artifact, transporting personnel to its location is currently not feasible, and all research must be conducted with remotely controlled robotic probes.

According to our current understanding, the object must not under any circumstances be moved. During our initial interaction with the object it was discovered that it can only move along one line in space. It cannot be moved in any other direction by any amount of force. Moving the object forward or back along the aforementioned line is nearly effortless.

Nevertheless, the object must be contained to its current position. Any entity or object attempting to move the object must be stopped using any means necessary, including full authorization by O5 Council to use lethal force. Further explanation of the reason for this requirement follows, below.

Description:
The artifact appears from a distance like a metal ring, approximately 1.2cm thick and 10.3cm in overall diameter. The ring appears to be vibrating at an extremely high frequency.

The ring can only be moved back and forth in a single straight line. The orientation of this line seems arbitrary, pointing from the center of the ring roughly towards the star Gliese 674. With only a small effort by Foundation equipment the Ring can be slid along that line, either towards or away from the aforementioned star. The ring cannot be twisted or spun in any direction.

Senior Researcher Dr Ossi has named the one dimensional line of the ring's movement the "1D Line". (Add to this section: coordinates of the 1D Line) Note that the 1D Line is is not an actual physical thing like a wire. There is nothing visibly there that keeps the Ring along that line.

There is also an extreme spatial distortion around the object. It appears to be the source of this effect, since the distortion will always be centered on the ring, even when the ring is moved. Any object approaching to within approximately 45 centimeters of the ring will appear to distort as though looking at it in a magnifying glass or microscope. There is no actual physical damage or change to objects approaching it, and when an object withdraws from the effect area, it appears normal and unaffected. Foundation probes under the direction of Mobile Task Force Rho-19 "Cythereans" who attempted to recover the object via robotic claws noticed this effect immediately, and reported seeing no permanent change or damage to the equipment.

The spatial distortion appears to be an extreme magnification caused by the bending of space. When a robotic hand reached for the object, cameras first saw the tip on the robotic hand magnify all the way down to the fibers of rubber at the tip of the finger, then they saw chains of the molecules making up the rubber, and in the last centimeters as the fingertip approached the ring, they saw what they believed to be the subatomic makeup of the very physical matter in the finger's material.

The ring's surface appears perfectly smooth with no variations in color. Initial scans by equipment available on site cannot penetrate the object. It seems to be completely opaque to all attempts to see its internal structure. Additional equipment is required to study the object's composition. (Need to check: what color is it?)

Discovery
The object was first discovered indirectly when Foundation personnel began investigating SCP-████. That object was discovered accidentally by NASA's Dawn spacecraft in July 2017 during its normal operations in the asteroid belt. NASA staff exposed to the original discovery data were administered amnestic treatments. O5 Council ordered Site Director Musk to begin Operation Nickle Eye, to construct and launch a new probe, Foundation7, to investigate the object. In February 2018, under the (somewhat flimsy) publicity campaign of sending a Tesla automobile to Mars, the probe was successfully launched. The Dawn spacecraft was publicly "retired" in November 2018 and redirected to rendezvous with Foundation7 in sector 03-06-DR.

Mobile Task Force Rho-19 "Cythereans" was assigned operational control of the two probes, and tasked with preparing acquisition and recovery plans while Foundation7 was en route.

Upon the arrival of Foundation7 and Dawn at SCP-████, it was discovered that the object was in fact a ████████████████████. It had struck an asteroid and was severely damaged, leaving only a large section of the ████████████████████████ with no trace of the original ████████████. All fragments were gathered together and sent back towards earth, where they will be collected and examined further at Site 98 in Philadelphia under Project Heimdall protocols.

After all fragments of SCP-████ were gathered, Agents performed a final scan of the area and noticed the ring object a short distance away. They attempted to collect the object, and it was then that they discovered its anomalous behavior of only being able to move along its 1D Line and its apparent distortion of space. The Ring object was reclassified as its own artifact, and jurisdiction of it, along with the Foundation7 and Dawn probes, were reassigned to Mobile Task Force Lambda-5 "White Rabbit". Cythereans retains jurisdiction of the original ████████████ pieces.

It is believed that the ████████████ was pushing the ring along its 1D Line, in the direction towards Gliese 674, when it passed through the asteroid belt and was struck and disabled. It is unknown for how long or how far it had been pushing the Ring, or how long ago it was destroyed by the asteroid collision. Cythereans may be able to ██████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████ ████████████████████████ to determine this information when the pieces of SCP-████ return to earth.

(Add to this section: It is unclear if SCP-████ was pushing the Ring towards the nearest end of the 1D Line, or away from it. This would indicate its intent to either cause the Ring Annihilation Scenario or prevent it.)

It cannot be over emphasized that whomever built SCP-████ is either going to notice that it has stopped working, or possibly they already have. They are going to come looking for it, to either repair or replace it, and to resume pushing the Ring. O5 Council had also appropriated the Kepler space telescope in October 2018 for this project, and it is now scanning for the anything approach the Ring.

Chronology of discoveries
Researchers of MTF White Rabbit have made several discoveries and advanced various theories on the nature of the Ring. Understanding the forces at work that constrain the Ring to being moved in exactly one direction were a first priority, as this anomalous behavior prevents us from transporting the object back to Earth for closer examination.

• Researchers are attempting to measure the scale of the distortion of space around the object. The distortion appears to extend radially outwards in all directions from the object.

• The orientation of the 1D Line along which the object can move continues to be a mystery. There are no significant visible spatial objects directly along the line in either direction.

• The same synthetic rubber material used in the robotic arms of the Foundation7 has been examined under an electron microscope at Site 98. The images from that examination have been compared to the images from the robotic arm approaching the object, and it is confirmed that we are seeing the atomic structure of the synthetic rubber in the spatial distortions.

• Researchers are now estimating that the maximum magnification seen near the Ring is on the order of 10^33. This is beyond any level of observation ever seen on Earth, far exceeding even the most detailed studies of subatomic interactions by the Large Hadron Collider. To be clear: a grain of sand would need to be expanded to the size of the observable universe to reproduce this level of magnification. This is in the realm of seeing at the theoretical Plank Length.

• Senior Researcher Dr Ossi has theorized that at this level of magnification, the Ring object we are seeing may in fact be a quantum String. Under String Theory, all fundamental particles in physics are made from vibrating Strings which are a single loop on the order of 10^-34 meters in length. They exist in 11 dimensional space, and their vibrations in these 11 dimensions determine what type of particle they are, such as an electron or a quark. This explains why the Ring appears to be vibrating, and also why its internal structure cannot be observed: it has no internal structure, as it is, in fact, a single particle.

(To clarify: Dr Ossi has explained that String Theory requires that there are 10 dimensions in space and 1 time dimension. We are used to only 3 dimensional space, like the classical X, Y, and Z used in math class. Physicists theorize that there are additional dimensions, but they are "curled up" in space. Instead of going on and on forever like you think of traveling in space in one direction, each of the additional dimensions is only a microscopic distance. For example, something like a stick of uncooked spaghetti looks somewhat 1 dimensional to us, and you can only move your finger along its length. But something very small like an ant or a flea would be able to walk along its length and would be able to walk around it and come back to where they started. The additional dimension on the spaghetti is "curled up" very small. It is unknown to current physics theory why other space dimensions would be curled up.)

• Our consulting Researcher Dr. Charles Anborough also explained that the 3 dimensions we know do not extend "forever". Space has been expanding since the Big Bang, and each of the dimensions is growing since then. This is why distant galaxies appear to be moving away from us, it is because the dimensions of space are expanding. At the time of the Big Bang, all the dimensions were very small, possibly even zero, but they uncurled and expanded rapidly after that.

(Note: Ossi and Anborough are furiously debating why the other space dimensions would not have uncurled since the Big Bang. We may need to separate the two of them to keep them on track with their research.)

• Dr Ossi was saying that there should not be anything in the universe that would have been strong enough to constrain a space dimension from uncurling after the Big Bang. He has also said that a Quantum String is a single particle in the form of a closed loop. They are utterly unbreakable because they are not made of smaller parts that could come apart. He has come to the frightening conclusion that if, somehow, during the moments after the Big Bang, one of the space dimensions started to pass through the center of the loop of a Quantum String as the dimension started to expand, it would become trapped. It would be like if a piece of paper were rolled up tight into a tube and then a metal ring was placed around it so it could not uncurl.

• Under those conditions, space would be under extreme stress around the area of the Quantum String. There would be an extreme "bulge" in space, which coincides with what we are seeing with the space distortion around the Ring object.

• With the "metal ring around the curled up paper" analogy, if the metal ring is slid off the end of the paper, the paper will uncurl. If this theory is correct, this means that sliding this Ring object could eventually slide it off the end, and another spatial dimension would unfold. The universe would transform from 3 dimensional to 4 dimensional. The laws of physics would transform into an unknown new configuration. It is also unknown if life would survive, or if, under this scenario, moving the Ring could annihilate all structure and all life in the universe.

• It is beyond our understanding how the ████████████████████████ located this one quantum String, in all of the universe, that was wrapped around a spatial dimension. If there truly are 10 spatial dimensions and we currently only see 3, then there must be a total of 7 of these Rings scattered across the universe, each one constraining one of the other dimensions from uncurling. Each of those other dimensions would have its own 1D Line somewhere in space, pointing in some other arbitrary direction. It is unknown if any of the other 6 Rings have been located and are being pushed along their 1D Lines.

• It is uncertain where the "ends" of the curled up dimension are. They could be nearby, or they could be gigaparsecs away. The Ring was being moved along its 1D Line, but we do not know if the direction it was being moved is closer to or further from the nearest end. If it was being moved away from one end, this would make the Ring safer. If it was being moved towards the end, that would bring about the annihilation scenario.

(UPDATE: The Kepler space telescope has detected another ████████████ approaching along the 1D Line. We are working to calculate its time of arrival, and mobilizing resources to prevent the Ring annihilation scenario, if that is their intent.)]]