Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen

Arthur77 felt fatigue attacking his whole body.The director of the observatory has disrupted his schedule, indeed, it seems that he has been at his desk for 16 hours.It was like this yesterday, and it was the day before yesterday... Anyway, that's what Nilda said.He had just spoken to her a few minutes earlier.On the screen, his wife's face was tense, looking very nervous, obviously worried for him. "Why don't you go home and rest, Arthur? You've been sitting at the table for nearly twenty-four hours." "yes?" "You know, you're not a young man."

"Not middle-aged, Nilda. But it's an exciting job. After 10 years of reviewing budget reports and reading other people's papers, I'm doing real research again. I Like it." She looked more worried. "At your age, there is no need to do research anymore. Arthur, your reputation has been established, and no one can shake it!" "Really?" "In the history of astronomy, your name will be remembered." "Or notoriety," he said wistfully. "Arthur, I really don't understand why you're..." "Let me be, Nilda. I won't pass out at the table, trust me. I feel rejuvenated doing this job. The only thing I can do is work. If that sounds conceited If so, let it be conceited. But it's important, and I..."

She sighed and said, "Yes, of course. But don't make it too long, Arthur. That's all I ask of you." Is it really too long?He was surprised.Yes, yes, of course it was a bit too long, but there was no other way.For such a problem, you can't treat it lightly, you must devote yourself wholeheartedly.When he calculated the force of gravity, in the last few weeks, he worked 16, 18, or even 24 hours a day, and only took a short break when he fell asleep.Waking up after taking a nap and going to work immediately, there are always unfinished equations in my mind. But I was only about 35 years old at that time, and now I am almost 70 years old, so I have to accept my old age.Dry mouth, dizziness, heartbeat, annoying.Although the office is very warm, my fingers are often stiff, my knees are trembling, and every part of my body is not in control.

He promised himself that he would only prolong the day a little longer, and then he would go home. Just extend it a little bit longer. Proposing an eighth hypothesis... "gentlemen?" "What?" he asked. But he must have turned the question into a roar, because when he turned his head, he saw young Yermot standing in the doorway, twitching all over his body in strange movements, as if the aftertaste of the dance was not finished.There was a look of horror in the young man's eyes. Of course, Yermot always showed a nervous look when he was beside the director...not just graduate students, but everyone.And Arthur was used to it all.Arthur was a little scary, and he knew it.But this time there was something different. Yermot looked at him with obvious fear and horror in his eyes.

It could be seen that Yermot had to use a lot of effort to speak.He said in a hoarse voice: "This is the calculation you want, sir..." "Oh, yes, yes. Give it to me." Arthur's hands shook violently when he received the printing materials handed over by Yermott.Seeing this scene, both of them couldn't help being surprised.Arthur's bony fingers were deathly white, and they trembled to a degree that not even Yermot, who was known for being the most prone to neurotic reactions, could match.He tried to calm his hand, but it always backfired.It's not so much to calm the hand, but rather to hope that Onas can retreat into the air.

With a sudden force, he snatched the printing material from Yermott's hand, and put it on the table with a snap. Yermot asked, "Do you need me to bring you anything?" "Are you talking about medicine? How dare you make such a suggestion?" "I just mean something to eat, or a cold drink." Yermot muttered almost inaudibly.He backed away slowly, as if he thought Arthur would jump up growling and grab him by the throat. "Ah, ah, I see. No, Yermott, I'm fine, fine." "Well, good-bye, sir." Student Yermot walked out.Arthur closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and tried to calm himself down.His work was nearing completion, he was sure of that.The stats he had Yermott calculate for him were almost certainly the final outfitting materials.The question now is whether he will end the work first, or the work will end him first.

He opened his eyes and looked at Yermot's calculations. There are three monitors on the desk in front of him.The screen on the left shows the orbit of Kargash calculated by using the theory of universal gravitation and according to the conventional calculation method, and the line drawn is red; Observations at Gash's position, resulting in revised orbits, indicated by yellow lines; the middle stage shows the superposition of the two figures.Over the past five days, Arthur has made seven different hypotheses, trying to account for the difference between calculated and observed orbits.Just hit a key on the keyboard to bring any of the seven hypotheses to the screen.

The problem is that all seven assumptions are worthless, and he knows that.Every assumption is inherently fatally flawed... The assumption was made not because calculations were required to prove it, but because the situation required some special assumption to justify his data.In the end, nothing was proved, and nothing could be proved.It seems that every time the logical reasoning reaches a certain point, something otherworldly is destined to intervene and change the gravitational interaction to suit the reason for the deviation.Indeed, Arthur knew that this fairy thing was what he needed to find, but it had to be something concrete.

Now, an eighth hypothesis needs to be formulated... He began typing Yermot's calculations.Several times, his fingers didn't listen to him, and he entered the wrong data.But he was very clear-headed, reminding himself of his input mistakes from time to time.Every time he made a mistake, he had to go back and correct it.Due to over-concentration at work, my eyes turned black twice and I almost passed out.But he still held on and continued to work. You are the only person in the world who can possibly do this research, so the work must be done.he told himself as he worked. It sounds like he's being silly, individualistic, or just a little bit insane.It may not be so serious, but at this stage of exhaustion, there can be no other thoughts except duty.All the basic concepts of this research project are contained in his head, his head alone.Therefore, he had to force himself to persevere until

... success. Yermot's last data was entered into the computer. Arthur tapped the keyboard, and the two tracks automatically appeared on the central display, and then tapped the keyboard again to combine the new data with the existing data. The conspicuous red elliptical orbit drawn by the calculation according to the theory of universal gravitation flickered and moved, and then disappeared suddenly; the same was true for the yellow elliptical orbit.Now there is only one line left on the screen, a thick dark orange line, and the two simulated tracks overlap completely without deviation by a single decimal point.

Arthur took a deep breath, stared at the screen for a while, then closed his eyes and leaned his head against the edge of the table.The orange oval burned in his brain like a ring of fire. He felt a strange sense of triumph mingled with terror. Now, he has found the answer; he is confident that this new hypothesis will stand up to scrutiny.The theory of gravitation is still convincing: the chain reasoning that made him famous will not be overthrown. But at the same time, he also knew that his familiar models of solar system patterns were in fact wrong.The unknowns they searched for, unseen behemoths, or dragons, were real.Arthur found this matter to vex him most, even with his famous theory salvaged.For many years, he always believed that he fully understood the laws of motion of celestial bodies, but now he realized that his knowledge was not comprehensive.In the known world, there is still a big unknown thing.Things are not always as he imagined, and it is difficult for him to understand it at his age. After a while, Arthur looked up, but the results on the screen did not change.He typed in a few more test equations, still nothing changed.All he saw was one ellipse, not two. very good.So, he thought to himself, the universe is not quite what you think it is.Well, you'd better readjust your perception, because you can't adjust the universe you already have. "Yermott, Fano, Beanie! You all come in!" he yelled. The chunky Fano came in first, followed by the slender Yermott, and then all the members of the astronomy department, Beanie, Tierlando, Clayt, Simbrown and others.They were all crowded inside the office door.From the expressions on their faces, Arthur knew how frightening his own expression was. It must be rough and crazy, his hair stood on end, his face was pale, and his whole face looked like an old man on the verge of death. Immediately alleviating their fears is important, this is not the time for romance. He said calmly, "Yes, I'm tired, and I know it. I might look like a demon from hell, but I've found something that seems to work." "Gravity lensing concept?" Beanie asked. "That's a hopeless notion," said Arthur dryly. "The burning sun, the folding of space, the bands of negative matter, and other ridiculous concepts that I've been playing with all week, all the same. They all sound plausible, but none of them stand up to scrutiny. However, there is one that worthy of inspection." He watched them with wide eyes. He turned to the screen and entered the data for the eighth hypothesis again.At this moment, he completely forgot about his fatigue: this time he didn't hit a single key wrongly, and his body was no longer sore, as if he had entered a world without fatigue. "In this hypothesis," he said, "there is a non-luminous planet the size of Kalgesh, which has its own orbit, and which orbits not around Onas, but around Kalgesh. His It is very large, actually as big as Kalgesh, so it is completely capable of exerting gravitational force on the Kalgesh star we live in, causing confusion in the orbit of the planet we live in, which is exactly what Beanie reminds us to pay attention to .” Arthur typed in the visual data, and a stylized image of the solar system appeared on the screen: the six suns, Kargesh, and the putative moons of Kargesh. He turned around to face everyone, exchanging unnatural glances.Although they were only half his age, or even younger, it was intellectually and physically difficult for them to fully accept the concept of another large planet in the sky as he did.If you want to accept it, you can only think that it is caused by his old age and confusion, or that there is some kind of error in the calculation. "The data supporting the eighth hypothesis are correct," said Arthur. "I assure you that I have tested it in every way imaginable." He looked at them with disdainful and angry eyes, and looked at them one by one.As if to remind them that he was Arthur 77, the discoverer of the theory of universal gravitation, and that he had not quit his field. Beanie said softly, "The reason we can't see this satellite is, sir..." "Two," said Arthur calmly, "like Kalgesh, this planet can only shine by reflected light. If it is made up of bluish stone for the most part... there is no incredible geological phenomenon ...its reflected light, engulfed by the glare of six suns, combined with the astigmatism properties of our planet's atmosphere, would be completely absent. With always several suns in the sky, we are seeing Missing the satellite." Fano went on: "If the orbit of this satellite is particularly large, is it possible, sir?" "Yes." Arthur typed the second image. "This is a close-up view, and you can see that the orbit of this unknown and invisible satellite is a huge ellipse, and it is so far away that it takes years for the light to reach us. No. Because it is too far away for us to feel the existence of the orbital effect...it is too far away for us to see it with the naked eye, and even with a telescope, the possibility of finding it is extremely small. Since we cannot understand his orbital effect with ordinary observation methods It exists, and it is only possible to capture it from the sky by some most special means." "Of course, we can look for it now," said Tierlando191, who specializes in astrophotography. "Of course we will," Arthur said to her.It seems that they are beginning to understand what he means, everyone has understood, this is not a joke. "Although you will find that this search is more difficult than you think, like finding a needle in a haystack, I still ask everyone to start this work immediately." Beanie said, "Sir, I have a question." "Please say." "If this orbit is as weird as you suppose, then this satellite, let's call it Kargesh II, is far away from us at a certain stage of its orbit. We can therefore deduce that it orbits at another stage. In the first stage, the position is closer to us. Even the most perfect orbit will have a certain degree of deviation. The orbit of a satellite orbiting in a large ellipse has a range of deviations between its perigee and apogee. It's going to be big." "Yes, the reasoning is logical," said Arthur. "But, sir," continued Beene, "assuming that Kargesh II was so far removed from us throughout the development of modern astronomy that we could not prove its existence, we would have to resort to some indirect means of understanding Its effect on the orbit of Kalgesh. Can you be sure that it will soon return from a distant place? And it will soon approach us?" "Not necessarily so." Yermot waved his arms and said, "We don't know where it is now, and we don't know how long it will take to go around Kargash, it may take ten thousand years. It may be in the Having approached Kalgesh in an unknown period of prehistory, it is now sailing away from us in a distant direction." "Indeed it is," Beanie admitted. "We really can't tell if it's coming toward us or away from us. Anyway, there's no way of knowing." "But we can try to find out," Fano said, "Tirrando's idea is right. Even if all the data are verified, we must know whether Kargash II really exists. Only by confirming this At one point, we may begin to calculate its orbit." "We can calculate Kalgesh's orbit from its perturbations," said Kleiter, a distinguished mathematician in the department. "Yes," interposed Simbrone, a cosmologist, "and we can tell if it's coming toward us or away from us. My God! What if it's coming toward us?" What? How horrible it would be! A non-luminous planet appeared in the sky...separating us from the sun! The sun's light could be cut off for hours!" "What a strange thing that is," Beanie said thoughtfully. "I think it's what people call a solar eclipse. You know: the visual effect of seeing an object when it's blocked by another object. But Will this happen? These suns are very large... how can the second of Kargesh block one of them?" "If it's close to us, it's possible," Fano said. "Hey, I can imagine a scenario where..." "Yes, in this case, why not work out every possible solution?" Arthur interrupted abruptly, interrupting Fano so brutally that everyone's eyes were turned to him. "Everyone does it like this. If this method doesn't work, try another method and see what you get." Suddenly Arthur felt he couldn't take it anymore and had to leave the office. Since the last thing was settled, Arthur felt that the vitality in his body had suddenly left him, and his whole body was heavy and weak, as if he was a thousand years old, the cold was falling from his arms to his fingers, and the muscles on his back were beating wildly.He knew that he had pushed his body to the limit and that it was time for young people to shoulder the burden. He stood up from the chair in front of the display screen, staggered and walked towards the center of the room. He stood for a while, and after returning to normal, he mustered up his strength, made a noble appearance, and staggered slowly. Walk slowly through the entire staff in the stage. "I'm going home now," he said. "Looks like I'll have a good night's sleep."