“A previously unknown physical phenomenon?”
“But that doesn’t fit with the sudden disappearance of the stars.”
“Why? That fits very well! After all, it could be a symptom of this disappearance.”
“No, Thomas. After all, the signal apparently only occurs with the stars that haven’t disappeared.”
“With all of them?”
“No, a few of them are missing it, like the object we measured second.”
“That then argues against a connection to the disappearance.”
“But what if all the stars missing the signal will eventually disappear? From the WENSS project data, none of the ‘disappeared’ stars can be assigned a radio source.”
“To say that definitively, one of the stars that doesn’t put out a signal would have to disappear right before our eyes. But why are you so worried about that, anyway?”
“One of those stars is the sun. If my theory is correct, our home star will at some point just go out.”
“Even if you’re right, Peter, remember that on cosmic scales, everything takes a long time. The sun will also eventually turn into a red giant. We don’t need to be afraid of that today.”
“But the stars we’re talking about were still observable in the sky twenty years ago!”
Peter was sitting on the sofa, as he always did at eight o’clock on the dot when the evening news was about to start. Franziska was always busy, and always a few minutes late. But today she hadn’t shown up at all, and the TV screen was black.
He drank from the beer bottle. Beer did not taste good to him, so he rarely drank it. But at least this way he was not all alone. Maybe he should get a pet? A dog would be too much trouble, but a cat might fit the bill. If Franziska returned, she wouldn’t mind. She liked cats. She was one herself. If you treated her wrong, she arched her back and scratched you.
What would happen now? If only he knew! Franziska expected him to fight for their relationship. But what about the sun? If he was right, Earth was threatened. Without the sun’s light, civilization, every living creature would die—Franziska, their children, and even the cat he wanted to get. Better not to get a pet, after all.
He had to fight for the sun. How pathetic that was, making him sound like a madman. If he was right, he was virtually obligated to give everything to prevent such an end. But that was what all crazy people thought of themselves. Should he have his head examined? He could ask the school psychologist, a good man and sworn to secrecy.
Peter sighed, and the sound of his breathing echoed. This was impossible. If he sat there much longer, he really would go crazy.
He got up and walked up to his second-floor study.
“Dear Dr. Koser,” he began his e-mail. “I’m afraid I have to bother you again. Unfortunately, I don’t know any expert in stellar physics who could answer my question. But in your magazine, researchers regularly answer readers’ questions, so I hope you can once again forward my question to the right person.
It is very short, and reads, ‘Is there a natural explanation for a peak at 418 megahertz in the radio spectrum of a main-sequence yellow dwarf of about one solar mass?’ I attach a graph of what this peak looks like. The data was obtained using the Effelsberg radio observatory. I suspect that my question is too specific for publication, but I still hope to get an answer. In return, I will remain a SPACE subscriber for life.”
He added salutations and sent the message.
And now? Based on the time, the news had just finished. In the past, he would be watching some romantic comedy with Franziska right now. She loved funny movies, insisting that life was serious enough. If the regular broadcast lineup didn’t have anything she wanted to watch, they might stream a travel documentary. He would have to reorganize his evenings. Unfortunately, tonight was cloudy, so he wouldn’t be able to get behind his telescope.
The astral projector! The device also had an entertainment mode. You could use the control app to download tours that took you through the entire universe. Some only showed the most exciting objects, while others also had an integrated storyline. Mostly it was about exploring something entirely new.
Peter stood up and walked downstairs. How many times had he used the stairs today? He should go out for a walk once in a while. It would be better for his health. But today he didn’t feel like doing anything. He was stuck in limbo, and he was at a crossroads. His life was going to change, and change big time. But today, all of that was still hiding beyond the horizon. And he could jump all he wanted—he couldn’t get any closer to a clear view of it.
Peter waved his hand to turn on the device. It would always be in the middle of the living room now, because no one would demand that he put it away. Revolution! He smiled even though no one could see him, something that he rarely did. Circumstances so often insisted upon a smile that he usually didn’t have a leftover one for when he was alone. But he hadn’t seen another person for days, so his supply was slowly increasing.
The astral projector howled. He’d forgotten to switch off the light. The device noticed that its projections could not be seen and increased its power. However, this made the room even brighter, and it had to keep upping its own brightness. Peter quickly turned off the living room light, which he didn’t even remembered turning on.
On his way back to the center of the room, Peter held a hand in front of his face to prevent a stray laser beam from accidentally hitting him in the eyes. The projection beams could only be seen where they united and conjured up a three-dimensional image. The projector slowly calmed down. Carefully, it adjusted its output to the darkness. It was faster when making the adjustment from dark to light.
And now? Peter fetched a chair from the kitchen, placed it right next to the device, and sat down. He set the coordinates so that he was in the center of the universe. His view of the cosmos changed immediately. He no longer recognized a single constellation. Around him it was strangely empty. Shouldn’t the Big Bang have taken place here? Maybe that was why it was so barren. Everything that was once here had long since blown outward in all directions. The center of the universe was its loneliest place. But that was nothing compared to his sofa.
Peter hated himself when he was in this mood. It was, of course, astrophysical nonsense. The universe had no center from which it expanded. New space was constantly being generated at each of its coordinates. It was a gigantic leaven, which swelled in all directions. Besides, the Big Bang took place in the whole universe simultaneously, just as it existed then.
It would have been nice to be able to watch it. But the astral projector refused to take him traveling back to that time. He had already tried. Perhaps the manufacturer, whose home base was the United States, was afraid of how religious groups might react if the astral projector didn’t show their version of creation. The birth of the universe had been a brutal, violent process that didn’t fit into every worldview.
Whenever he was depressed, Peter started to philosophize, but that wasn’t getting him anywhere.
He loaded the saved data into the app. The spherical shell appeared again. He activated the stars that had disappeared. Because they appeared invisible in the spherical shell, he made them blink. Pulsating blue crosses appeared on the spherical shell, reminding him of gravestones. If the planets that orbited these stars had been inhabited, all of their living beings would have perished.
He added the data for the few remaining stars, those that lacked the 418-megahertz signal. Now they were all there.
He walked up and down along the spherical shell. What was geometry trying to tell him? Was there a time-lapse? The shell was about half a light-year thick, so the stars it hit were all the same distance from the source of the calamity, give or take a quarter of a light-year—minuscule in cosmic dimensions. But did that mean the catastrophe genuinely came from the center of the sphere? Not necessarily.
He tried to imagine how the calamitous process spread from the north pole of the sphere. A mysterious force could have spread across the shell,
wiping out one star after another. He programmed such a sequence into the control app. Everything had to have started—at the earliest—after the last sky survey wherein the stars were still found. That gave him an approximate sequence of events, since the stars in the southern sky were detected at different times than those in the northern sky. He let the inexplicable force run over the spherical shell with these parameters, but something went wrong: The sun also went out, replaced by a blinking blue cross.
What was wrong with his reasoning? Maybe it was the north pole of the sphere. Why should the process start at this arbitrary point defined by humankind? He tried it at a randomly chosen point on the equator of the sphere, but this time another still-visible star disappeared.
He had to work on this systematically. He wrote a small optimization algorithm that searched for the exact point from which the mysterious force emanated. He connected the algorithm to the astral projector via the programming interface. That way, he could watch the program at work.
“Start.”
The universe flickered. The algorithm selected a point in the upper latitudes. Rapidly, a white, steamroller-like depiction moved across the spherical shell. Whenever it hit a star, the star became a blinking blue cross. Shortly before the end, the sun’s turn came. The implication: eight billion people die. Peter got goosebumps.
He replayed the simulation, and space flickered again. The roller raced. The sun died. Peter sped up the process. Flicker. Roller. Death. Flicker. Roller. The sun survived. Next time it died again. Death, survival, survival, death, death. Death had the upper hand here. That was reassuring to him, because the sun was still shining. Thus, a scenario in which it would’ve been extinguished by now could not be right. He could be wrong, and how he hoped he was.
Peter had to turn away. The roller raced over the spherical shell from different directions, and its rapid movement was making him nauseous. Then his smartphone vibrated. Done!
His little program had found a result—the most probable time sequence. He didn’t need to map reality. It all started about 20 degrees north of the equator of the spherical shell, at a single point. If the sphere were the Earth, an asteroid might have hit there, sending an earthquake around the globe. But it was not Earth. It was a virtual sphere in space whose dimensions he’d calculated himself. It could not be seen, nor was it present, and it was defined by a mere two-digit-number of stars.
But something hit this sphere, from the outside or maybe from the inside. The force of the hit created the white-hot roller, which now spread over the sphere. One star after the other went out. Then the simulation stopped. They had reached the present.
Peter wanted to know the future, so he pressed the start button again. The simulated roller continued to move. It first knocked out star number 1, whose radio spectrum they had evaluated, then star number 2. No, he was mistaken. That was the sun. The sun went out.
He went to it and carefully took it in his hand. The system showed it as a small, brown ball. Peter pressed it briefly, and the projector understood the command and showed what the simulation predicted about the sun’s fate. Peter read the numbers glimmering brightly in the void.
We have three months left!
The universe stood still. Peter sat on the sofa. So... was he really right? His numbers were too imprecise to commit to. And anyway, what would that look like? Help, the sun is about to be extinguished. I have no idea how that’s going to happen, but I’m sure it will. We’re all going to die.—Yes, yes, Mr. Kraemer. Please put on this comfortable white jacket.
Peter laughed. It would be his own fault if it came to that. Doomsday prophets were never well-liked. He would probably share the fate of the Trojan Cassandra, whom nobody believed. But she was stabbed to death because of her prophetic gift. He’d just be put away somewhere.
There was only one way—he must eliminate the danger himself. The signal at 418 megahertz had been found coming from all the stars that were being spared from disaster. Somehow, he must make it so that the sun also emitted such a radio signal.
He must construct a beacon!
March 12, 2026 – Passau
A beacon? How do you build a damn beacon for something like this?
Peter announced a change in the day’s lesson for his 11-C physics students in order to brainstorm together with them. The students appreciated the change, especially since he had promised them an impromptu assignment. After he’d clarified the origin of the term from seafaring and traffic, he described the problem to the class as one of a purely theoretical nature.
The main problem they quickly encountered was that Earth-based radiation was too uncertain. There was the varying cloud cover, for one thing, but also the fact of the Earth’s rotation. Earth itself would effectively shield a transmitter on the lawn behind his house for half the time. One student had suggested a balloon, but that was also stationary for all practical purposes.
So they had discussed space as an alternative. A satellite in Earth orbit had a better view of the universe, but was also repeatedly shielded by our planet on its way around the globe. A probe orbiting the sun would be better. They had researched the costs together and had come up with an amount in the millions of euros—considerably more than he could ever get his hands on.
Maybe he could manage to convince one of those Internet millionaires of his theories? They were bound to be besieged by crazies like him. He needed a better idea. Peter flipped open the notebook and started a search. What was the cheapest way to get a satellite into space?
He came across a concept that struck him, one having been invented by a Swedish furniture giant. CubeSats were small, cuboid boxes in standardized sizes. The smallest possible specimen, a Unit, or U for short, was 11.35 by 10 by 10 centimeters and weighed no more than 1.33 kilograms. These mini-satellites were then launched into space with many other CubeSats on a large rocket, often with a sizeable primary payload that did not fully utilize its payload capacity. This made launching CubeSats particularly inexpensive.
Peter kept looking. Building and launching CubeSats seemed to be profitable, and many companies offered their services to him. Some only facilitated the launch, while others also built the satellite according to user requirements. But when he looked at the promised deadlines, the CubeSats had to already be assembled. Most providers promised flight-ready delivery within two weeks. Special requests were extra, of course. Two years ago, he had ordered a new car online, and it had taken six whole months for delivery.
His stomach growled. He ran downstairs to the kitchen, took a pizza out of the freezer, unwrapped it, and put it in the oven. He set the temperature to 210 degrees and looked at the clock above the sink. He had to take the pizza out of the oven at 2:32 p.m.
Peter ran back upstairs and sat down at his desk. A new window had opened in the web browser where he’d searched for CubeSats.
“Good afternoon. I’m Miguel, your account manager at SigmaLaunch,” it said in English. “Can I be of assistance to you? If so, click ‘Yes,’ please.”
Obviously a chatbot. Peter was about to close the window when he remembered his questions. Would a CubeSat be capable of emitting a strong enough signal? Maybe there was a human behind this invitation after all?
He clicked on ‘Yes.’
“I’m glad to hear that. How can I be of service to you?”
“I would like to order a CubeSat that can broadcast a radio signal.”
“You’ve definitely come to the right place at SigmaLaunch. May I ask your name?”
“Peter J. Kraemer.”
“Thank you, Peter. It’s nicer to be able to address you personally. Of course, we only store your data if a contract is signed. A radio signal, then? With what destination? That’s important so that we can plan for sufficient signal strength.”
Well, if he only knew. How far must the signal of the beacon reach to protect the solar system from annihilation? The intensity of electromagnetic radiation decreased with the square of the distance. As a physics teacher,
he knew that well enough. But it never entirely died out. With a sufficiently sensitive receiver, one could still receive the Earth’s TV transmissions on Alpha Centauri.
However, he did not know how sensitive the recipient of this unknown threat was. He didn’t even know if a recipient existed, let alone what it was. But if he told this to Miguel, Miguel would think he was crazy. And rightly so.
“Peter, are you still there?”
“Yes, Miguel. I was just doing some checking in my records. The satellite should be able to maintain data communications to the outer solar system.”
“I see. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to rent capacity on the Deep Space Network? They guarantee a service level of 99.8 percent, and billing is based on usage. So you would be reliably online, but you would only have to pay for actual usage. We currently have a special offer where the 20,000-euro sign-up fee is waived if you opt for a two-year contract. I could set you up on the spot.”
“That’s nice, but the satellite is supposed to send signals around the clock. We want to use it to calibrate important equipment. To do that, it has to broadcast twenty-four seven.”
“That’s different, of course. In that case, the Deep Space Network would be the more expensive solution. I’d love to show you some current models from our collection. Do you have any virtual reality equipment?”
“No,” said Peter.
“That’s too bad. If you did, you could examine the proposals yourself. But we can continue to talk via our chat.”
“Wait, Miguel. I own a holoprojector. I think it’s VR compatible.”
“Wonderful. I’ll send you a link to our VR demonstration room right here in the chat.”
Miguel had barely finished his sentence when the promised link popped up. Peter clicked on it. The program prompted him to select an output device, but his astral projector did not appear in the list. Bummer. Was it incompatible after all? Nonsense. It was simply not powered on at the moment. Peter ran downstairs and activated the device. When he breathlessly arrived back upstairs, he saw the astral projector in the list. He selected it and ran back down into the living room.
The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction Page 11