Almost no one dared think it, for it was too terrible to consider. But Galen Cameron thought it. And he spent the better part of ten years delving into it. Not that finding the answer mattered one whit, because if “it” were a possibility, if “it”really could happen, there was nothing anyone could do but await the inevitable.
“The ultimate disassociation.” That’s what Galen called it. “The ultimate nutcase.” That’s what the physicists, the astronomers, the priests, and the politicians called Galen. The ridicule by the physicists and astronomers wounded Galen most. He didn’t care so much that everyone else was too narrow-minded to consider the possibility, but he was upset that people who pride themselves on searching for facts, for truth in whatever form it takes, were so quick to label him a quack, a pseudo-scientist whose theories were on their face so utterly and completely ridiculous.
The thing is, they weren’t so utterly and completely ridiculous. Finally, in April 2015, after years of suffering the contempt of his intellectual inferiors, his postulates were given the attention, within the scientific community, they deserved. They were tested by the same people who had ridiculed him. The very same scientists who had mocked him sat in stunned silence when it became clear that he was right. These same people were horrified to understand, finally, that Galen Cameron had uncovered fatal flaws in the science that informed their understanding of the universe.
These were people cast in the mold of Arthur Stanley Eddington who had dismissed Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s prediction of the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. Black holes, which were considered a scientific impossibility at the time, were the logical conclusions that would have emerged from Chandrasekhar’s postulates, so his theories were considered inferior and were not taken seriously. But, the Chandrasekhar limit finally was accepted and Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 1983.
Galen Cameron would not be awarded the Nobel prize for his work, though. Outside a small circle of physicists and astronomers and their overlords, no one would know his theories were more than hokum. No one else would know about Cameron’s celestial conflation because no one would tell them. Not Galen, not the scientists who came late to his understanding, not the political overlords who funded the “research” that would refute Galen’s theories with his full support. Unlike Chandrasekhar, Galen Cameron’s work would never be welcomed as an important step in understanding the universe in which we exist.
After April 2015, whenever someone stumbled upon Galen’s published work and questioned whether it was, in fact, meritorious, the response would invariably use a false syllogism to illustrate how “absurd” it was. One of the favorites was:
All white dwarves are stars
Some movie actors are stars
Therefore, some movie actors are white dwarves
Twenty-nine years after that April 2015 meeting when his theories were revealed to have merit and were subsequently shelved and locked away, they would be proven. In one instant, a tiny fraction of a second, there would be confirmation. And then there would be nothing.
