New US$1 million scifi podcast takes listeners on a journey through the history of the Universe.

Sept. 21, 2009 - PRLog -- The adventure begins when a black hole is produced at CERN in Switzerland. Nothing new there, you might think, except that the scenario described in this story has never been risk-assessed by any of the studies performed to ensure the safety of the experiments at CERN! It involves a cosmic monopole being captured by the ATLAS detector and transformed into a black hole by absorbing protons from the LHC beam.
The black hole then burns its way through the detector and absorbs two men who are battling to control it. Moments later time stops everywhere in the Universe except near fragments of mysterious blue crystal. Each fragment is surrounded by a bubble of time. Hold a crystal and you’re alive, but without it you’re frozen in time.

The main character, fourteen-year-old Catriona O’Brien, is in an adjacent cavern when the disaster happens. She is finally given a crystal and hears one of the two absorbed men saying that if she can collect all the crystal fragments and bring them down the ‘Time Tunnel’ then he can restart time.

So begins an adventure that will take Catriona back in time. To save the Universe from destruction she must go inside stars and out to the farthest reaches of intergalactic space. She must travel through living cells and solve molecular-scale problems as she collects Time Crystals. On her epic journey she will visit all the major events in history, including the origin of life and the creation of the solar system, the Big Bang and beyond.
One reason it has taken so long to write this story is because of the problem of working out a credible fictional scenario which allows the characters to do these incredible things. For, although mainly an entertainment, this story has a serious educational mission.
‘The listener will live the story,’ Wyken says, ‘so learning without effort. A huge range of different sciences will be merely the stages upon which the episodes are set. Key facts will be absorbed through the listeners’ skin as the adventure carries them along.’
But there is a strong fantasy element to this story as well. Catriona and the other characters have to contend with mysterious and dangerous beings which are coming up the Time Tunnel intent on using the people of Earth for their own evil purposes. There will soon be a sister podcast, the Art & Science of Time Crystal, that will explain which parts of the story are fact and which are fiction.

Wyken Seagrave is passionate about communicating science through history and art, allowing the audience to explore where we came from and how we relate to the rest of the Universe. It was this passion which motivated him to give up his lucrative job as an IT consultant for a multi-national bank and spend eight years researching this story while working part-time for a major UK scientific charity. This career switch has cost him well over US$ 1 million in lost earnings but he thinks it is well worth it.

‘I know I’m never going to make up the money I’ve lost. I’m earning less than one tenth of what I was ten years ago but I’m ten times more fulfilled and a hundred times happier,’ he says. The first Time Crystal episodes, read by the author, are available now as free podcasts on iTunes and Podiobooks (http://podiobooks.com/title/time-crystal).
Wyken is no stranger to the history of the Universe. His website http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com has been a standard on-line reference work for over 10 years as it weaves together a brief account of the main events in history and an introduction to basic science.

Wyken is available for interview over skype and is very happy to answer questions from radio audience about any aspect of the history of the Universe, the writing of Time Crystal or almost anything else. Contact Wyken Seagrave on tele: +4424 7671 7275, mobile: +447808 294 844, Skype: wyken.seagrave or email: wyken@timecrystal.co.uk

The following news is lined up for Time Crystal:
Friday 25 September: the Art & Science of Time Crystal will be available on iTunes and PodioBooks.
Thursday 1 September: Wyken will appear live on PodioRacket broadcast over Blogtalk Radio (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/PodioRacket ) and will announce a $1000 dollar competition.
Friday 9 October Wyken will announce an exciting and ground-breaking initiative in which listeners will be able to role-play the characters, debate each week’s episode and vote for how the next episode should develop. Wyken will take note of these comments and votes, although he says ‘I cannot guarantee to comply with the votes if they make the characters do something I do not believe they would do.’
Friday 16 October Subscribers to the Time Crystal Forum will be able to become guest editors, making comments on each Episode before it is published.
Monday April 5 2010, the printed edition of Time Crystal Volume 1 (ISBN 978-1-871281-13-2) will be published on 5 April 2010, two years before Crystal Day.

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Publishers of books, podcasts, on-line games and websites connected with the history of the Universe and introductions to basic science.
We passionately believe that we should all know where we came from and how we relate to the Universe around us.