195354Three Body Chapter 9

195354

Three Body Chapter 9

9. Cosmic Twinkle

Wang Miao drove along Jingmi Road to Miyun County, then turned to Heilongtan, walked a section of winding mountain road, and arrived at the radio astronomy observation base of the National Astronomical Observation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He saw twenty-eight parabolic antennas with a diameter of nine meters lined up in the twilight, like a row of spectacular steel plants.

Two tall 50-meter-diameter radio telescope antennas built in 2006 stood in this row At the end of the rice antenna, when the car approached, they reminded Wang Miao of the background of the photo of Yang Dong’s mother and daughter.

However, the projects undertaken by Ye Wenjie’s students have nothing to do with these radio telescopes. Dr. Sha Ruishan’s laboratory mainly receives the observation data of three satellites: the microwave background detection satellite COBE launched in November 1989 and which is about to be phased out.

The Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe WMAP launched in 2003 and the Planck high-precision cosmic microwave background probe Planek launched by the European Space Agency in 2007.

The microwave background radiation spectrum of the universe as a whole conforms to the black body radiation spectrum with a temperature of 2.726K very precisely, and is highly isotropic, but there are fluctuations of about 5 parts per million in different parts.

Sha Ruishan’s job is to redraw a more accurate map of the microwave radiation background of the entire universe based on satellite observation data. This laboratory is not big, and the main computer room is full of satellite data receiving equipment, and there are three terminals that display data from three satellites respectively.

When Sha Ruishan saw Wang Miao, he immediately showed the enthusiasm of a person who has worked in a lonely place for a long time when he sees a visitor, and asked him what observation data he would like to know.

“I want to observe the overall fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation.”

“Can you… be more specific?” Sha Ruishan looked at Wang Miao with strange eyes.

“That is, the overall isotropic fluctuation of the cosmic 3K microwave background radiation has an amplitude between 1% and 5%.”

Sha Ruishan smiled. As early as the beginning of this century, the Miyun Radio Astronomy Base was open to tourists. In order to earn some extra money, Sha Ruishan often gave tour guides or gave lectures. This kind of smile is his answer to tourists (he has adapted to it). often reveals their appalling scientific illiteracy. “Mr. Wang, you… are not in this profession, are you?”

“I work on nanomaterials.”

“Oh, that’s right. However, you probably know something about the cosmic 3K background radiation, right?”

“Not much is known. The current theory of the origin of the universe holds that the universe was born in a big bang about 14 billion years ago. In the early days of its birth, the universe was extremely hot and then began to cool, forming what is known as the microwave background.

The “T embers” of radiation. This kind of residual background radiation that pervades the entire universe can be observed in the centimeter wave band. It seems that in 1960s, when two Americans were debugging a high-precision satellite receiving antenna Accidentally discovered cosmic background radiation…”

“That’s enough,” Sha Ruishan interrupted Wang Miao’s words with a wave of his hand, “then you should know that, unlike the tiny inhomogeneities in different parts of our observations, the fluctuation of the overall radiation background of the universe follows the expansion of the universe, in cosmic time Slowly changing on the scale, with the precision of the Planck satellite, it may not be possible to measure this change until a million years later, but you want to find a 5% fluctuation in it tonight?! Do you know what this means? This Means the entire universe flickers like a broken fluorescent tube!”

And it’s flashing for me, Wang Miao said in her heart.

“Ms. Ye, are you kidding me?” Sha Ruishan shook his head and said.

“I hope it’s really a joke.” Wang Miao said. He wanted to tell him that Ye Wenjie didn’t know the details, but he was afraid that it would cause him to reject him, but this was what he meant.

“Since Mr. Ye told me, let’s observe it. It’s not too hard anyway, with an accuracy of one percent. Just use an antique COBE.” Sha Ruishan said, busy on the terminal, and soon a flat message appeared on the screen. Straight green line, “Look, this is the current real-time numerical curve of the overall background radiation of the universe. Dropped.

If there is a fluctuation of more than one percent of the amplitude you said, the line will turn red and the fluctuation will be displayed. I bet it will also be a green line until the end of the world. To see it manifest with the naked eye It may take longer to get the changes than watching the sun destroy.”

“Won’t this affect your normal work?”

“Of course not. With such a rough precision, it is enough to observe the leftovers of the data with COBE. Well, from now on, if that great fluctuation occurs, the value will be automatically archived.”

“Maybe until one o’clock in the morning.”

“Wow, so accurate? It doesn’t matter, anyway, I’m on the night shift. Have you eaten yet? Well, let me show you around.”

It was a moonless night and they wandered along the long array of antennae. Sha Ruishan pointed to the antenna and said, “Isn’t it spectacular? It’s a pity that they are all deaf ears.”

“Why?”

“Since they were built, there has been constant interference in the observation frequency band. First, the paging stations in the late 1980s, and now it is the crazy development of mobile communications. The projects that these meter-wave synthetic aperture radio telescopes can do, such as meter-wave sky surveys , radio variable sources, research on supernova relics, etc.,

most of which cannot be carried out normally. I have contacted the NRC (National Radio Regulatory Commission) many times, but it is useless. Can we play with China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Netcom? Without money, The mysteries of the universe are nothing! Fortunately, my project relies on satellite data and has nothing to do with these “tourist landscapes.”

“In recent years, the commercial operation of many basic researches has been very successful, such as high-energy physics. It should be better to build the observation base farther away from the city?”

“That’s still a matter of money. For now, it can only be technically blocked from interference. Well, it would be great if Teacher Ye was here, she is very knowledgeable in this area.”

So the topic turned to Ye Wenjie. From her students, Wang Miao learned about her troubled life: He heard Sha Ruishan tell how she witnessed her father’s tragic death during the “Cultural Revolution”, how she was later framed in the Construction Corps and never heard from again; He returned to the city in the early 1990s and taught astrophysics at the university where his father had worked until his retirement.

“It was only recently that I found out that she spent more than 20 years at the Red Coast Base.”

“Red An?!” Wang Miao stopped in surprise, “Could it be that those legends…”

“Most of them are true. A developer of Red Bank’s self-interpretation system immigrated to Europe and wrote a book last year. Most of the legends you mentioned come from that book. As far as I know, they are true. Red Bank Most of the participants in the project are still alive.”

“This is really… a legend!”

“Especially when it happened in that era, it is a legend among legends.”
……

They talked for a while, and Sha Ruishan asked about the purpose of this strange observation, but Wang Miao avoided answering, so he didn’t ask any more. Obviously, the dignity of an expert does not allow him to show too much interest in such observations that violate professional common sense.

Then they went to an all-night bar for tourists and sat for more than two hours. Sha Ruishan poured beer after glass of beer and became more talkative, while Wang Miao was already in a state of restlessness, and those thoughts kept appearing in his mind. green straight line. Sha Ruishan did not accept Wang Miao’s proposals until ten minutes before one o’clock in the morning, got up and returned to the laboratory.

At this time, the spotlights on the radio antenna array had been extinguished, and the antennas turned into a simple black two-dimensional pattern under the night sky, like a row of abstract symbols, looking up at the universe at the same elevation angle, as if waiting for What. This scene made Wang Miao shudder, and he thought of those giant pendulums in “The Three-Body Problem”.

It was exactly one o’clock in the morning when they returned to the laboratory. When they turned their gazes to the terminal screen, fluctuations had just appeared, straight lines turned into curves, sharp peaks appeared at different intervals, and the color also turned red, like a hibernating bird. The snake began to congest and squirm.

“It must be a malfunction of the COBE satellite!” Sha Ruishan said, staring at the curve in horror.

“It’s not a malfunction.” Wang Miao said calmly. In the face of such things, he has initially learned to control himself.

“We’ll know right away!” Sha Ruishan said, quickly operating on the other two terminals. Soon, he called up the real-time cosmic background radiation data of the other two satellites WMAP and Planck, and displayed their changes as a curve——

The three curves fluctuate synchronously, exactly the same.

Sha Ruishan took out another laptop computer, frantically started the system, plugged in the broadband network cable, and then made a call—Wang Miao heard that he was contacting the Urumqi Radio Observation Base—and waited. He didn’t explain anything to Wang Miao. He stared at the browser on the screen, and Wang Miao could hear his rapid breathing: After a few minutes, a coordinate window appeared on the browser, and a red curve appeared on the window, matching the The other three were fluctuating in precise synchronization.

In this way, three satellites and a set of ground observation equipment simultaneously confirmed one thing: the universe is flickering!

“Can you print out the previous curve?” Wang Miao asked.

Sha Ruishan wiped the cold sweat off his head, nodded, and moved the mouse to start the printing program. Wang Miao impatiently grabbed the first piece of paper from the laser printer, drew a pencil across the curve, and compared the distance between the wave crests with the Moores code table he just took out.

short long long long short long long long short short short short long long long short long long short long long short long long long short short long long long short long long short short Long and long, long and short, this is 1108:21:37.

The countdown continues on a cosmic scale, 78 hours have passed, and there are 1108 hours left?

Sha Ruishan paced back and forth anxiously, stopping behind Wang Miao from time to time to look at the string of numbers he was writing. “Can’t you really tell me the truth?!” he asked loudly impatiently.

“Dr. Sha, believe me, I can’t tell for a while.” Wang Miao pushed away the pile of papers printed with fluctuation curves, staring at the row of countdown numbers, “Maybe, all three satellites and one ground observation point have malfunctioned.” .”

“You know it’s impossible!”

“What if someone vandalized it?”

“Impossible! Change the data of three satellites and one ground observation station at the same time? Then this destruction is a bit supernatural.”

Wang Miao nodded, he would rather accept this supernatural than the flickering of the universe. But Sha Ruishan immediately took away the only life-saving straw in his arms.

“It’s actually very simple to finally prove all of this. The fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation are so large that we can detect them with the naked eye.”

“What nonsense are you talking about? Now you are violating common sense: the wavelength of background radiation is 7cm, which is seven or eight orders of magnitude larger than visible light. How can you see it?”

“Use 3K glasses.”

“3K glasses?”

“It’s a popular science gadget we made for the Capital Planetarium. With the current technology, the twenty-foot horn antenna that Penzias and Wilson used to discover the 3K background radiation more than forty years ago can be made into glasses size, and a conversion system is set in the glasses to compress the wavelength of the received background radiation by seven orders of magnitude and convert the 7cm wave into red light. In this way, the audience can see the universe with their own eyes when wearing the glasses at night 3K background radiation, now, you can also see the cosmic flickering.”

“Where is this thing now?”

“In the planetarium, there are twenty copies.”

“I have to have it by five o’clock.”

Sha Ruishan picked up the phone and dialed a number, but it took a long time for the other party to answer the phone. Sha Ruishan tried his best to convince the person who was woken up in the middle of the night to wait for Wang Miao in the planetarium in an hour.

When parting, Sha Ruishan said: “I won’t go with you. What I saw just now is enough. I don’t need such a proof. I still hope that you can tell me the truth at the right time. If this phenomenon leads to any research If it works out, I won’t forget you.”

“The flashing will stop at five o’clock in the morning. Don’t go into it in the future. Believe me, there will be no results.” Wang Miao said while holding the car door.

Sha Ruishan stared at Wang Miao for a long time, then nodded, “Understood, something happened in the scientific world…”

“Yes.” Wang Miao said, getting into the car, he didn’t want to continue this topic.

“Is it our turn?”

“At least it’s my turn.” Wang Miao said and started the car.

Wang Miao arrived in the city an hour later, and he got off the car in front of the new planetarium. The midnight lights of the city pass through the transparent curtain wall of this huge glass building, revealing the inner structure faintly. Wang Miao now realizes that if the architect of the new planetarium wanted to express his feelings about the universe, he succeeded—the more transparent things are, the more mysterious they are. The universe itself is transparent, as long as the eyes can see it, how far you want to see You can see how far away, but the more you look, the more mysterious it becomes.

The sleepy-eyed second operator of Planetarium 1 was already waiting for Wang Miao at the door. He handed a suitcase to Wang Miao, “There are five pairs of 3K glasses in here, all of which are fully charged. The button on the left is the switch. On the right is the brightness adjustment, and there are more than a dozen pairs below, you can look at it however you want, I’ll go to sleep first, in the room next to the door: This Dr. Sha, is really crazy.” After speaking, he turned and walked into the dark in the hall.

Wang Miao put the box on the car seat and opened it, and took out a pair of 3K glasses, which were very similar to the helmet-mounted display in the V-suit he had just used. He picked up a pair and went out of the car to put it on. The night view of the city he saw through the lens did not change, but became darker. Only then did he remember to turn on the switch.

Immediately, the city turned into hazy halos. Most are fixed in brightness, and some flicker or move. He knew that these were all centimeter microwaves converted into visible light, and the center of each halo was a source of emission. Because of the wavelength, it was impossible to see the shape clearly.

He raised his head and saw a dark red shimmering sky. In this way, he saw the cosmic background radiation. This red light came from more than 10 billion years ago. It is the continuation of the big bang and the aftermath of creation. I can’t see the stars. Originally, since the visible light band has been pushed to the invisible, the stars should be black spots one by one, but the diffraction of centimeter waves drowns out all shapes and details.

When Wang Miao’s eyes got used to all this, he saw the red background of the sky flickering slightly, and the whole space flickered synchronously as a whole, as if the whole universe was just a single lamp in the wind.

Standing under the twinkling sky, Han Miao suddenly felt that the universe was so small that only he was imprisoned in it. The universe is a small heart or womb, and the pervasive red light is the translucent blood night filled in it. It is suspended in the blood, and the flashing cycle of the red light is irregular, just like the heart or womb irregularly. Pulse, from which he felt a huge weird and perverted existence that could never be understood by human wisdom.

Wang Miao took off her 3K glasses and sat weakly on the ground leaning on the wheel. In his eyes, the city at midnight regained the realistic picture depicted in the visible light band, but his eyes wandered, catching something else: one of the neon lights next to the gate of the opposite zoo was broken, irregularly Flickering; the leaves on a small tree nearby swayed in the night wind, reflecting the light of street lamps, flickering irregularly; the five-pointed star on the Russian-style spire of the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the distance also reflected the different streets below The lights of the headlights flickered irregularly…

Wang Sen tried to decipher these flickers according to the Morse code. He even felt that the folds of a few colorful flags floating in the breeze and the ripples on the surface of a pool of water by the side of the road all conveyed the Morse code to him… He tried hard to decipher, feeling the elapse of the ghost countdown .

After some time, the staff member of the planetarium came out and asked Wang Miao if he had finished watching. When he saw him, the way he looked made the sleepiness disappear from the man’s eyes. After packing up the case of the 3K glasses, the man stared at Wang Miao for a few seconds, then walked back quickly with the case.

Wang Sen took out his mobile phone and dialed Shen Yufei’s number, she answered it quickly, maybe she also spent a sleepless night.

“What is the end of the countdown?” Wang Miao asked weakly.

“I don’t know.” After saying these three short words, the phone hung up.

what is it Maybe it was his own death, like Yang Dong’s; maybe it was a catastrophe like the Indian Ocean tsunami a few years ago, no one would link it with his own nano research project (associating, every time before Are catastrophes, including the two world wars, the end of a ghostly countdown?

There is a person like myself who no one can imagine is ultimately responsible); perhaps the total destruction of the world, in this perverted In the universe, that would be a relief to everyone… One thing is for sure, no matter what the end of the ghost’s countdown is, in the remaining thousand or so hours, speculation about the end will torture him cruelly like a demon , and finally completely destroy him mentally.

Wang Miao got into the car, left the planetarium, and drove aimlessly in the city. Before dawn, the road was empty, but he didn’t dare to drive fast, as if the car was driving fast, and the countdown was also going fast. When a ray of morning light appeared in the east, he parked the car on the side of the road, got out of the car and started walking, also aimlessly.

There was a blank in his consciousness, only the countdown was showing and beating on the dark red background radiation, and he himself seemed to have become a simple timer, a death knell for whom he did not know. It was dawn, and he was tired from walking, so he sat down on a bench. When he looked up at the destination he subconsciously walked to, he couldn’t help but shudder.

He is sitting in front of Wangfujing Catholic Church. Under the pale dawn sky, the Romanesque spire of the church looked like three giant black fingers, as if they were pointing out to him something in the dark space.

Wang Miao got up to leave, but a burst of sacred music from the church stopped him. Today is not a Sunday. This may be a rehearsal for the choir for Easter, singing the “Illumination of the Holy Spirit” that is often sung at mass on this holiday.

In the majesty and profoundness of the sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe has become smaller and turned into an empty church. The dome is hidden in the background radiating red light. Ant.

He felt that his trembling heart was being caressed by an invisible giant hand, and he returned to his frail and helpless childhood for a while, and something that was hard in the depths of his consciousness softened like wax and collapsed . He covered his face with his hands and began to cry.

“Hahaha, another one!” Wang Miao’s crying was interrupted by a burst of laughter behind him. He turned his head to see Da Shi standing there, exhaling a puff of white smoke.