Scene from...The son of Man

Deep in the great void of space, the school bus-sized craft floated nearly 380 miles over the marbled turquoise planet. Its orbital speed, around 17,500 miles per hour, insured that it would return to this very spot, somewhere over the west coast of Africa every 97 minutes. The gleaming chrome cylinder, with its odd wing-like protrusions, glistened against the blackness of space. Suddenly, the craft’s four reaction wheels whirred to life. The gyros aboard the Hubble space telescope began tugging the big craft hard to port, as the hatch door energized and slowly swung open.1

The craft methodically maneuvered around until the precise Fine Guidance Sensors began to slow the gyros down. The bulky telescope coasted to a stop exactly where it was told and quickly began focusing on a tiny point somewhere between the earth and star cluster NGC 3532. Once in place, the four cameras located within the Hubble’s wide field and planetary camera began recording data. 2

Camera number four was recording a large panoramic view of the area, a view that would later be scaled down to be in proportion with the other three images being recorded simultaneously. The magnified view then fell on WFPC2’s planetary camera. It was viewing a region of space four times smaller than that seen by the wide field cameras, but was recording four times as much detail, focusing on an area no larger than the state of California and two and a quarter trillion miles away.3

Three hours later, deep in the lush, green Puerto Rican hills, 26 electric motors located at the Arecibo Observatory whirred to life and began tugging the vast Gregorian dome—suspended 450 feet above the inverted reflector—until it was over the exact spot corresponding with the frequency of the same small area of space.4

Near San Diego, California, at the Palomar Observatory, two 125 ton dome shutters began swinging open. At the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, deep in the Atacama Desert of Chile, 64 colossal antennas, each spanning forty feet, began eerily moving in unison like mammoth faces staring into the sky. They moved until they located their programmed coordinates and stopped. Within hours, computers were crunching out the numbers as all over the world scientists frantically scrambled, checking and rechecking the disturbing data, now pouring in from everywhere.5