“You can’t hold us prisoner,” Kate replied.
“Actually, that’s exactly what I should do,” Akron replied. “Just be thankful I didn’t insist that you join OneZero in the brig.”
“What if it was your son?” Kate demanded.
Akron slammed his palms on the table and our plates rattled. Rachel jumped and woke up with a whimper. “It is my son! Both of my sons! I’m never going to see them again, and instead of whining about it, or trying to punish the people responsible, I’m treating them to a hot dinner and offering them sanctuary in my refuge. Just you think about that.” Akron’s face was flushed. He looked to Richard. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go change and get some sleep. When they’re finished, please show them to my quarters.”
“Of course...” Richard replied, and slid out of the booth with a half-finished slice of pizza draped over one hand.
“Your quarters?” I echoed, watching Akron as he slid out next.
“Where else did you think you were going to sleep? We’re already at maximum capacity. Your family was supposed to take my family’s place, remember? Four for four.” Akron smirked and shook his head. “You can thank me later.”
With that, he stormed off, and I watched him go, feeling guilty and angry at the same time. Kate’s hand clutched my leg, her eyes wild with fear. “We can’t leave him out there,” she whispered to me.
I caught Richard watching us as he slid back into the booth, so I leaned over and kissed Kate on the cheek. “We won’t,” I whispered back. As I withdrew, I added for Richard’s benefit, “We don’t have a choice. He’ll be fine. He has the Hartfords to look after him.”
Richard’s eyes found mine, and he nodded stiffly to me as we each grabbed another slice of pizza. “He’s a tough kid. He’ll be okay,” Richard added.
“Yes, he will,” I agreed. Because I’m going to find him and bring him here. I switched topics to avoid raising his suspicions. “Rick, there’s one thing I forgot to ask.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you ever manage to decode anything from the Screechers’ signals?”
A slow smile spread across Richard’s lips, and he nodded. “We decoded them, all right. They were in an obfuscated form of binary.”
“And? What did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything. It was pixel data for a black and white image.”
An image. That made sense. “What was it?”
“It was a scale diagram of all the planets in our solar system, listed in order of their distance from the sun. They also added the rogue star, and another planet—a gas giant with three moons. I managed to gain remote access to the James Webb Space Telescope and use it to find them. We believe the Screechers came from one or more of those moons. They still have atmospheres, and two of them are as big as Earth.”
I nodded along with that. It corroborated what OneZero had told Akron while we were traveling here in his submarine.
“But that’s not all,” Richard said, shaking his head.
I arched an eyebrow at him, and waited for him to go on.
“When we put that planet and its moons into our simulations, we discovered that our Sun is going to capture them.”
“What does that mean?” Kate asked.
“It means we’re going to be sharing our solar system with an advanced alien race—or several of them, if what that robot told you is true. And it means that the invasion we experienced was just the first wave. There’s probably billions more Screechers out there just waiting to come to Earth.”
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1. How do You Hide a Star?
When I began writing this book, I knew I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. I imagined a rogue star surprising us with a close flyby of Earth, and I wondered what might happen as a result. For reference sake, a “rogue star” is a star which has escaped the gravitational pull of its galaxy and is headed for intergalactic space. Rogue stars do not orbit the galactic center.
The first thing I had to do was figure out how a rogue star that’s already relatively close by (ETA 10.921 years) could have hidden under our noses for so long. As it turns out, there’s a few problems with that. The first problem is that we’ve scanned the entire sky with all kinds of different telescopes and instruments. We’ve found all of the nearest stars, and we know that the very closest one is Proxima Centauri at 4.25 light years away. Even if Proxima were a rogue, there’s no way that it could reach us in any kind of time-frame that would take us by surprise or pose an imminent threat. We’d see it coming for thousands of years. As for the discovery of a new, never before seen star, it’s just not possible for one to be hiding from us within any useful proximity of Earth.
While I was researching this book, someone suggested that it could be hiding behind our sun. But the problem with that, is that the Sun is moving, and Earth moves around the Sun, so nothing can hide behind it for long. With that in mind, I went another route. The only real way that a star could hide from us is if it is extremely dim. The dimmest class of stars in existence are Y brown dwarfs. The coldest brown dwarf that we’ve discovered so far is WISE 1828+2650, with a surface temperature of 25 degrees Celsius, or 80 degrees Fahrenheit.1
Thanks to NASA’s WISE space telescope, we’ve found six Y brown dwarfs within 40 light years of Earth.1 Again, to have missed one that’s somehow already made it to within less than a light year of us is inconceivable.
The closest known Y brown dwarf is WISE 1541-2250 at 9 light-years away. That’s still way too far to make sense for the events in this book.
At this point you might think I had to give up on coming up with a realistic scenario. But then I thought, what about a dead star, a so-called black dwarf? Stars that have run out of fuel to drive the fusion in their cores will eventually grow dark and cold, and they’d be extremely hard to spot. When I looked into this, however, I learned that the universe hasn’t been around long enough to generate any black dwarfs.2 Failed stars, however, are all over the place. What is a failed star? A brown dwarf that never ignited, or one that did, but quickly ran out fuel. Bingo.
“Most brown dwarfs race through their deuterium in about 100 million years - a flash, in cosmic time. (By comparison, our sun will be stable for about 8 billion years.) Once the star has burned all the deuterium it can reach, it’s burning days are over. The heat it built up through burning deuterium will slowly fade away, and the dwarf will truly be a ‘failed star.’”3
I decided that a failed, rogue star should be colder than Neptune if it were to escape detection. Such a cold body lurking beyond the outer planets would be incredibly difficult to detect with current instruments. We are planning to launch a new telescope, however, which will be uniquely well-suited to discovering these cold stars via its infrared scanning capabilities. This telescope is the James Webb Space Telescope, whose launch has coincidentally been delayed until 2020.4 So, let’s suppose that with the launch of this new telescope we finally discover the incoming Rogue.
2. ETA 10.921 Years
Okay, so now that I could explain how we missed seeing the inbound rogue star, I had to come up with some real numbers to explain where it is, how fast it’s moving, and how long it’ll take to reach us. These details ultimately determined the time frame of my story.
So I arbitrarily set the ETA for this inbound star to be about 10 years 11 months and 2 days (10.921 years). After that, I did some research into the velocity of known Rogue stars. The fastest one we
’ve ever detected is moving at an eye-popping 1200 km/s.5 That sounded too fast to me. What about a more modest speed of 904 km/s? With the speed set, and the ETA of 10.921 years, I calculated the distance from Earth at the time of discovery: 904 km/s * 344,404,656 s (number of seconds in 10.921 years) = 311,341,809,024 km—three hundred and eleven billion kilometers away. That sounded like a long way off. To find out just how far, I needed to put that in some perspective. For example, where is the edge of our solar system?
The edge of our solar system is not strictly defined, but one definition is the extent of the Sun’s solar wind and magnetic field.6 This boundary is called the heliosphere. At its leading (closest) edge, the heliosphere is 90 AU (astronomical units) away.7 Note: one AU is approximately 150 million kilometers.
Converting the distance of my rogue star to astronomical units using google’s search engine gives me 2081 AU. That means the rogue star is located well beyond our solar system.
On a related, but somewhat tangential topic, the Sun itself is moving around the galactic core at a whopping 240 kilometers per second.8 With that in mind, please note that for the purposes of this book, the pre-determined 904 km/s of the rogue star is a relative velocity (relative to that of the Sun), and not the Rogue’s actual outbound velocity from the Milky Way.
3. Frozen Earth
So, in 10.921 years the world will end, Nibiru style. What might happen if this rogue star makes a near pass with Earth on its way through our solar system? I realized I had no way to mathematically calculate a realistic scenario for that. If I was going to base subsequent events on anything close to actual science, I was going to need some help.
That was when I discovered Universe Sandbox 2. Using this program I was able to simulate exactly what would happen to Earth’s orbit (and it’s climate!) based on actual data and physics.
I discovered that after a near miss with an extremely dim rogue star of 70 Jovian masses that’s moving at 904 km/s, the Earth’s orbit will shift significantly. Depending on where the Rogue passes us, that could make Earth either much warmer or much colder. I wanted to go with colder because Frank Herbert already wrote Dune, so I adjusted my simulation until I saw Earth get dragged into a more distant orbit. The Earth’s orbit becomes more eccentric / elliptical as a result of the rogue’s passing, and the effect is a gradual slide into sub-zero temperatures that plunges Earth into an ice age. Now you know why this book is called Rogue Star: Frozen Earth.
So when you read about people talking about how cold it’s going to get, and how fast the Earth is going to turn into a snowball, remember that I based those details on an actual simulation. I’m sure that simulation is still far from accurate, but at least I didn’t pull those numbers out of my hat!
Note: I did make one concession where I sacrificed realism for the sake of story elements and drama. The eclipse depicted in the book never should have happened. See if you can figure out why, and send me your answers here: http://files.jaspertscott.com/roguestarcontest.htm The first person to figure it out will get a $20 gift certificate from me for Amazon.com. Subsequent winners will get the consolation prize of a free e-book.
4. Tidal Waves
The Moon’s gravitational pull causes the tides on Earth. So if a small, failed star passed us, what kind of tidal forces could we expect? The answer depends largely on three factors: how close does the rogue get, how massive is it, and how long does it spend tugging on our oceans as it flies toward and away from us.
I already had to input some of that data for my Universe Sandbox simulation. The rogue is 70.0 times the mass of Jupiter, and at its closest approach, it passes Earth at 0.104 AU—that’s 40.5 times the distance from Earth to the Moon at perigee (the closest point in the Moon’s orbit).
Given that info, I used an online calculator for the Moon’s gravitational force to calculate an answer for the passing rogue.9 For reference sake, the Moon’s gravitational force is 7.79*10^18 Newtons at perigee. Inputting the mass of the Rogue (1.3286*10^29 kg), and it’s nearest distance from Earth gives a gravitational force of 2.1*10^20 Newtons for the passing rogue.
That’s 26.9 times stronger than the Moon’s tidal force!
Next, I looked for the average high tide from the Moon, but I couldn't find this data. What I did find was tidal data for specific locations. E.g. New York, New York has a high tide of about 5 feet.10 If we assume a linear relationship between gravitational force and tidal swell, then 5 feet x 26.9 = 134.5 feet. That’s a massive tidal wave. Although, technically, the tide would rise to that level in a series of increasingly-larger waves over a period of several hours as the rogue approaches. How many hours?
Considering that the rogue's speed is 904 km/s we can calculate how far it would travel in an hour: 904 km * 60 (seconds per minute) * 60 (minutes per hour) = 3,254,400 km / hour. The closest approach is 1.56*10^7 km = 15,600,000 km. Divide that by the speed of the rogue per hour and you’ll find that it will take 4.79 hours to travel from double the closest approach distance to the actual closest approach where the tide will surge by 134.5 feet.
According to the calculator I used before, at 3.12*10^7 km (double the closest approach) the gravitational force would be: 2.63*10^19 Newtons (N). That is only 3.37 times the force of the Moon's gravity at perigee. Again, assuming a linear relationship, that means a tidal swell of 5 * 3.37 = 16.85 feet. Not small, but not massive either.
At 6 hours out from closest approach, the rogue is 3,254,400 km/hour * 6 hours = 19,526,400 km + 15,600,000 km (closest approach distance) = 35,126,400 km away. Putting that distance into the calculator results in a gravitational force of 1.84*10^19 Newtons. That’s only 2.36 times the Moon’s gravitational force, which results in a high tide of 5 * 2.36 = 11.8 feet.
The Moon’s own tides may very well add or subtract from that along the way, but it’s safe to say that tides will begin surging noticeably when the rogue is still six to seven hours away. There will also be a delay in the arrival of those tides, which corresponds to the speed of the Earth’s rotation (this is what determines the arrival of high and low tides from the Moon as well).
For some perspective on the eventual 134.5-foot tidal surge, Hurricane Katrina produced one of the highest storm surges ever recorded of between 25 and 28 feet.11 At almost five times that height, the Rogue’s passing would cause unimaginable flooding of coastal regions all around the world.
5. Conclusion
Between rising tides and falling temperatures, there’s a lot to worry about in Rogue Star: Frozen Earth. The scary part is, this is all something that could actually happen. Of course, the odds of it happening are extremely small, so you can relax—unless you believe the prophecies about Nibiru, that is.
Sources
1. Choi, Charles Q. "How Cold Is a Y Dwarf Star? Even You Are Warmer." Space.com. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.space.com/12714-coldest-failed-stars-brown-dwarfs-wise.html.
2. "Black Dwarf." Wikipedia. July 14, 2018. Accessed July 20, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf.
3. "How Hot Are Brown Dwarf Stars When They Are Burning Deuterium?" Astroquizzical. Accessed July 20, 2018. https://astroquizzical.com/astroquizzical/how-hot-are-brown-dwarf-stars-when-they-are.
4. Lewin, Sarah. "NASA Delays Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Until 2020." Space.com. March 27, 2018. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.space.com/40102-james-webb-space-telescope-launch-delay-2020.html.
5. Cofield, Calla. "Fastest Star in the Galaxy Has a Strange Origin." Space.com. May 19, 2015. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.space.com/28737-fastest-star-galaxy-strange-origin.html.
6. "How Big Is the Solar System?" Universe Today. March 16, 2017. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.universetoday.com/104486/how-big-is-our-solar-system/.
7. Dunbar, Brian. "Did You Know..." NASA. June 07, 2013. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/IBEXDidYouKnow.html.
8. "Distance & Speed Of Sun's Orbit Around Galactic Centre Measured." Universe Today. February 20, 2017. Accessed
June 04, 2018. https://www.universetoday.com/133414/distance-speed-suns-orbit-around-galactic-centre-measured/.
9. "Tidal Force Calculator." High Accuracy Calculation for Life or Science. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1360312100.
10. "Tide Times for New York." Tide times and Tide Charts. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/New-York-New-York/tides/latest.
11. "Storm Surge Overview." Glossary of NHC Terms. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge/.
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OTHER BOOKS
BY JASPER SCOTT
Suggested reading order
Rogue Star
Rogue Star: Frozen Earth
Rogue Star (Book 2): New Worlds
(Coming September/October 2018)
Broken Worlds
Broken Worlds: The Awakening (Book 1)
Broken Worlds: The Revenants (Book 2)
Broken Worlds: Civil War (Book 3)
New Frontiers Series (Loosely-tied, Standalone Prequels to Dark Space)
Excelsior (Book 1)
Mindscape (Book 2)
Exodus (Book 3)
Dark Space Series
Dark Space
Dark Space 2: The Invisible War
Dark Space 3: Origin
Dark Space 4: Revenge
Dark Space 5: Avilon
Dark Space 6: Armageddon
Dark Space Universe Series (Standalone Follow-up Trilogy to Dark Space)
Dark Space Universe (Book 1)
Dark Space Universe: The Enemy Within (Book 2)
Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller Page 31