Rooibos E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In the Cedarberg Mountains of South Africa, surrounded by the beauty of the Fynbos wild flower National Park, a young astrobiologist finds herself in the midst of controversy.

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

Rooibos

"to the battle of scientists to uncover the secrets of our universe" All characters (apart from Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe) that appear in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Rooibos

Characters;

Jan van Blerk; astronomer, ranger.

Gerda van der Schyf; astrobiologist

Bok De Wet; missionary

Liesl van Deventer: missionary

Victor Khoza: farm worker

Location Fynbos, West Cape, South Africa.

Cedarberg Astronomical Observatory, Dwarsrivier farm, Cedarberg Highlands, Citrusdale and Duikerskloof.

Time September 2014

“I will have to go into Cape Town for supplies,” said Gerda.

“OK. Can you get more beer? And pick up the balloon.”

Shouted Jan van Blerk.

“Beer, when there is all this lovely wine produced here in the Fynbos?”

“Ja, beer - I’m a Dutchman remember.”

Outside of the observatory, dawn was breaking over the hills. A slight mist hung over the valley below them. Up here the ericaceous plants were not yet fully in flower. It was below where the swathes of flowers swept across the landscape.

She breathed in deeply. Last night had been fantastic. The sky clear, studded with stars. They had been observing for hours. With astronomy it was easy to lose yourself in your work.

She had been a year here, and now this new project.

The Cedarberg observatory was small but had been selected to participate in a project called “Cosmic Ancestry”.

They were to send up a series of balloons at selected times to gather particles in the air.

They would, later today.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle postulated that life on earth was delivered from space.

Spectral analysis of interstellar dust had indicated that large organic molecules and even bacterial spores occur in space.

More recently analysis of the human genome had found forty percent of the genome consisted of viral DNA.

A constant rain of viruses, bacteria and other organic molecules had caused life on earth, and what is more was strongly influencing evolution.

The aim of the balloons was to collect, here in the clean and undisturbed air of the Fynbos, further evidence for the theory.

Gerda van der Schyf was an astrobiologist, still a rare breed in the astronomy world which had for so long been dominated by astrophysicists.

Up till now space had seemed a cold and dead place inhabited by dark matter, black holes, and super nova.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were painting a different picture, of the universe as a place alive, of spreading life in a constant process of seeding planets.

She gunned the engine of the old 4x4 and set off down the dusty track.