The EXODUS Incident, 1st ed. 2021
A Scientific Novel
Science and Fiction Series

In the near future, Earth is suffering from climate change, famines, and fundamentalism. A global nuclear war is imminent. Interstellar probes from the Breakthrough Starshot project initiated by J. Milner and S. Hawking have discovered a habitable planet in the stellar system Proxima Centauri, just in time for the exodus of the elites. On board the EXODUS starship, the crew starts to experience strange things. The voyage to Atlantis, the new home for mankind, enters a mysterious and disquieting territory, where conspiracy theories about what is real and what is virtual emerge.

THE EXODUS INCIDENT is a novel about an interstellar journey, which connects science to virtual realities and epistemology. In the guise of a final investigative report, a scientific treatise discusses the physics and mathematics behind the story: the starship, the fusion thruster, the target planet, and the journey, addressing anomalous effects which involve relativistic speed and deep space environments.

Peter Schattschneider is professor emeritus in solid state physics at TU Wien. During his long career, he has been a teacher at college and has written and edited popular articles for broad audiences on topics which deal with diverse aspects of physics. As a scientist, he worked for a private engineering company and he covered research positions as professor for the French CNRS and as director of the Vienna University Service Center for Electron Microscopy. His record of publications consists of more than 300 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and several monographs on electron-matter interaction. His current research focuses on electron vortex beams, which are exotic probes for solid state spectroscopy.

His interest in physics emerged from an early fascination for hard science fiction (sci-fi). He has published two sci-fi novels and two story collections in German and many short stories in sci-fi anthologies, some of them translated into English and French. Together with colleagues, he has given a series of lectures at the university in Paris, Vienna and Beijing on Physics in Science Fiction.

A thought-provoking novel about epistemology, truth, and virtual realities, so important in times where conspiracy theories proliferate

A closing fictitious ESA report includes the scientific concepts on which the novel is based

The Breakthrough Starshot project [J. Milner and S. Hawking 2016] is assumed to have succeeded

Fully worked examples of the surprising physics are freely available as supplementary information