by Don Viecelli
“What’s that light?” Kaye asked.
“It’s the Northern Lights. I checked the NASA Internet site last night and it said there was another solar flare two days ago. It was a pretty big one. I was hoping we would see something tonight. It looks like we will.”
They sat down next to each other on the cushions in the back of the boat and watched the color intensify. It grew quickly and turned a bright red color. The sky looked like it was catching on fire. The lights rippled like curtains and quickly filled the sky above them. The lights seemed to dance in the wind. They could still see the stars twinkling behind the light. It was too beautiful to describe.
“How long will they last?” Kaye asked.
“Probably till midnight. Maybe longer. This is getting more frequent. We never used to see Northern Lights this far south. I think the Tularians were right. The sun is getting more active. I hope we get the solar shield built before it gets bad.”
Kaye hugged him closer. He felt something around her body. It was the memory disk. He picked it up in his hand and look closely at it. It was glowing ever so faintly, the same color as the lights. “You’re wearing the Mo-Li.” He called it by the Tularian name.
“I know. I just felt like it. I wear it all the time now. How about you?”
“Usually I do, but I didn’t want to take the chance of losing it while sailing.”
“Do you wear it at night when you sleep?” she asked.
“No, I keep it on my dresser. Why do you ask?”
She kept her eyes on the dancing lights. “I’ve been having strange dreams lately. Not bad dreams. Unusual dreams. Good dreams. Sometimes I remember them when I get up in the morning.”
“What about?”
“I talk to people. It seems so real. Last night I dreamt I was talking to my grandparents. I’ve haven’t seen them for ten years. They died when I was in college. I miss them both. They seemed so happy to see me. I didn’t want to go.”
Dave didn’t know what to say. He kissed her and hugged her closer to him. He wondered why Commander Orlutinion gave them the disks. He knew the disk could store memories. They both had learned how to store thoughts and read them back. He used it like a recording device. He pictured important scenes in his mind and transferred those thoughts to the Mo-Li. He planned to use the stored information in the future to write a book. But he wondered if there was more to it than this. He felt deep inside that there was, but he didn’t know what it might be. He would ask Commander Orlutinion if he ever saw him again.
Dave looked at the stars and the bright aurora hanging in the night sky like pillars of fire. How far would man go? Would they ever reach the stars like the Tularians? What would they see? How long would it take? Would the journey be worth the risk? All he had were questions. He wondered where they would get the knowledge and time to explore the universe. It was so big, he thought. But in the end, he knew they had little choice in the matter. The sun would decide their fate, one-way or the other.
THE END
Author’s Note
According to NASA scientists, about 4.5 billion years ago another star was born. It was an ordinary star, not unlike millions of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which by the latest count, contains more than 100 billion stars. The star lies 25 thousand light-years from the center of the galaxy.
This star became our sun and a new solar system was born. The Greeks called the sun Helios. The Romans called it Sol. It is by far the largest object in our solar system. It contains 99.8% of the total mass, which is equal to 330,000 Earth masses. The planet Jupiter contains most of the rest of the mass in the solar system.
The sun is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium gases and is a gigantic nuclear reactor. It burns the hydrogen using nuclear fusion from the immense gravitational pressures at the core. It converts the hydrogen atoms to helium atoms and emits energy in the form of light, x-rays, infrared, microwaves, radio waves and other energized particles that make up the solar wind that warms the planets, drives our weather and provides energy for life.
Currently, about half the amount of the hydrogen in the core of the sun has been fused into helium. As the hydrogen is used up, the sun swells in size. NASA scientists say that within one and a half billion years, the surface of the sun will be 3.3 times larger than it is now and will be far more luminous. The sun will look like a big orange disk in the sky. The temperature on Earth will be 100 degrees warmer. All the seas will have evaporated and life will cease to exist.
Eventually, the temperature of the sun will rise so high that it will explode in one big bang called a planetary nebula, and fuse the rest of the helium into carbon. The outer layers of the sun will be blown into space in the form of a dense solar wind. Only a white dwarf will remain, about half the mass of the current sun. It will slowly cool down and become a black dwarf with the ashes of the planets circling around it. This will all take another 4.5 billion years or so to occur, which is a very long time.
Everything that happens until then will occur in stages called solar events. These events start with the solar cycle, which lasts eleven years from Solar Minimum to Solar Maximum and back to Solar Minimum when a new cycle starts. As the sun moves through this cycle, it becomes more active. Sunspots appear on the surface, followed by Solar Flares, Solar Prominences and Coronal Mass Ejections. Each event produces similar effects in the solar system, some worse than others, especially if the event is aimed directly at the Earth at the time of the eruption. They are almost impossible to predict with current technology.
No one knows when the next solar eruption will occur or what effect it will have on our planet. There is no known relationship between solar storms and magnetic field shifts on Earth. It will take more scientific research to finally solve these mysteries.
Author’s Page
Biography
The author lives in the Chicagoland area with his family. He attended Michigan State University and earned his MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in Illinois. He recently retired as a product marketing professional in the high tech industry and is pursuing a writing career. This is his first full-length science fiction story. He has always enjoyed science fiction and plans to continue writing imaginative novels that explore the future boundaries of real science.
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?
Thanks!
Don Viecelli
Other books by the author:
The Guardians Series, The Complete Collection, Books 1,2,3
The Guardians - Book 3
The Guardians - Book 2
The Guardians - Book 1
UTOPIAS
G’s Future
G’s Future - The Journey, Part 2
The Formula
Author’s website:
Don Viecelli Sci-Fi
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