Reborn Before the Apocalypse: My Backing is the Nation

Chapter 208 Chaos
Jiang Yang knew that this was not actually the end of the black hole approaching event.

As a black hole approaches Earth, its gravity will affect the planet. The same effects will continue as it moves away, perhaps even more significantly.

Furthermore, the effects of altered geological structures will not fully manifest in the short term. It may take millions of years for Earth's geological structure to return to a stable state.

Now is not the time to let our guard down.

But this at least indicates a trend: things will get better from here on out.

In the control room, joy once again filled people's faces. And on the television broadcast, cheers echoed from all directions throughout the empty city.

Jiang Yang breathed a sigh of relief, walked out of the base, and went outside.

It was clearly the dead of night, but outside it was as bright as dawn or dusk.

A crescent moon hung in the sky, and sparse stars quietly released their light.

They alone could not possibly make the world so bright. What truly illuminates this world is that black hole.

Jiang Yang looked up and saw the bright, white light.

It is like the king of the stars, so bright and dazzling that it cannot be looked at directly, and it single-handedly covers the light of thousands of stars and the crescent moon.

Jiang Yang looked to the other side and saw a star suddenly fall from the sky, trailing a long tail, and disappear in an instant.

That was a shooting star.

One meteor disappears, and another appears in the blink of an eye.

Seeing a meteor in a city with such severe light pollution is a rare occurrence. But even before the black hole actually got close, meteors had been frequently appearing in the city's night sky several days ago.

Not only in this city, but Jiang Yang also knew that a large number of meteors had appeared in every city, village, and wilderness on the entire planet Earth.

An unprecedented meteor shower of immense scale, covering the entire Earth, is unfolding.

This is the same thing as the light from that black hole.

Black holes do not emit light when they do not have an accretion disk. The accretion disk is formed from the matter accreted by the black hole—there must be matter first.

At a distance of 140 million kilometers from Earth, there is obviously no matter under normal circumstances.

But now is clearly not a normal time.

Disturbed by the black hole's gravity, numerous celestial bodies of varying sizes in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter have broken free of their original orbits and are hurtling towards the black hole.

It was the main body bombarded by asteroids. And it was these asteroids that provided it with the fuel to ignite its accretion disk and illuminate Earth's night sky.

Compared to this, the global meteor shower was merely a minor aftershock.

Looking at the bright star in the sky, a hint of worry flashed through Jiang Yang's mind.

"Although global supercomputing simulations show that the black hole will enter a stable orbit around the sun, will the continuous asteroid impacts change its orbit?"
That would be troublesome.

At this moment, whether or not we survive this apocalypse remains to be seen in one final test.

If things stabilize, everything will be fine. If not, the situation is less certain.

Time passed quietly. As the distance increased, the bright star created by the black hole quickly dimmed.

Geological disasters reported around the world, such as hurricanes, thunderstorms, torrential rains, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes, are still frequent. Although the human world has not yet returned to its previous order, the situation has generally improved, with both the number and intensity showing a decreasing trend.

At this moment, through the observation of the deep space telescope, Jiang Yang also saw the appearance of the black hole.

Against the backdrop of a huge, bright sun, a long river of stars seems to appear in the vast starry sky.

That black hole is the head of this long river. Behind it follow countless points of light, stretching into the distance where no end can be seen, chasing after it relentlessly like moths to a flame.

At the Doomsday Project Command Center, Jiang Yang specifically sought out the scientist responsible for tracking and determining the black hole's orbit.

"Is the future trajectory of the black hole still unpredictable?"

The scientist shook his head: "We can only ever determine a general range, not a precise one."

This is a chaotic system, you see.

He pointed to the starry sky composed of thousands of asteroids on the big screen: "First of all, it is impossible to determine which of the celestial bodies in the asteroid belt will be affected and thus break away from its original orbit and begin to follow this black hole."

The asteroid belt contains as many as 1 million objects larger than 1000 meters in size, and even more objects larger than 1 meter in size with a mass between 1 ton and 100 tons, estimated to be over 10 billion.

These billions of stars collide and influence each other, and their orbits are so complex that they cannot be observed, let alone calculated.

Secondly, once they begin to follow the black hole, collisions between them will become more frequent, and their orbits will change more drastically. The angle, velocity, and direction of the impact with the black hole will all exert different alterations on it, which is unpredictable.

Thirdly, the process by which black holes accrete matter is not yet fully understood by us.

The gravity of a black hole tears matter apart, creating an accretion disk. This disk rotates at high speed and spirals into the black hole, involving energy transfer from the ergosphere, changes in the electromagnetic field, and black hole jets. The exact amount of kinetic energy exerted on the black hole and how much is canceled out by the jets cannot be precisely calculated; only a rough range can be established. Therefore… we can only deduce the process from the result. Our observation that the black hole has entered a stable orbit allows us to deduce approximate answers to the three questions above.

Jiang Yang asked with some concern, "Doesn't that mean we're still in great danger?"

The scientist laughed and said, "Theoretically, that's true, but in reality, there's no need to worry too much."

Why did we choose to disrupt the black hole's envelope at a distance of 1000 million kilometers? It was because we had calculated these factors in advance and simulated the way that would maximize the probability of the black hole entering a stable orbit.

Just like weather forecasts, we can't accurately predict the weather conditions in a specific area at a precise time, but we're quite accurate at predicting overall trends, so there's no need to worry too much.

He saw a clock-like pattern on the big screen.

The area in this pattern is divided into three parts. The rightmost part shows stable orbits, the middle area shows orbits to be determined, and the leftmost part shows unstable orbits.

The three areas each occupy one-third of the space.

At this moment, the indicator of the black hole's orbital stability is clearly in the stable region, still some distance from the undetermined orbit.

Jiang Yang's worries lessened a little.

Time quietly passed to October 14, 2078.

In previous cycles, 7:00 AM on this day in the Eastern Time Zone 8 was the time when the end of the world would occur.

This time, when Jiang Yang woke up from his sleep, he saw that it was already eight o'clock in the morning.

The apocalypse has not arrived. The black hole that tore the Earth apart has now passed by, and the distance has increased to approximately 320 million kilometers.

Due to the acceleration caused by the sun's gravity, this black hole is moving faster in this lifetime.

The apocalypse has passed, but Jiang Yang's worries have not completely dissipated.

Upon arriving at the Doomsday Project Command Center, Jiang Yang's eyes immediately fell upon the clock face pattern.

Compared to what I remembered, the pointer seemed to have shifted slightly to the left.

"Don't worry too much. Although the probability has decreased slightly, the change is not significant. It is still highly likely that the black hole will enter a stable orbit."

Although the expert was trying to comfort Jiang Yang, Jiang Yang could clearly see that his face was also full of worry.

"Can we find a way to intervene in this process?"

"There's no way, it's impossible for us to do it."

Even setting aside the fact that we currently have very few hydrogen bombs available globally, even if we had 360 million, or even tens of millions, hydrogen bombs, they would be utterly useless against a celestial impact of this scale.

He paused for a moment: "We can only watch."

The celebratory atmosphere in the command center was slightly less intense than usual.

More people's attention began to focus on the clock pattern.

In space, collisions from countless small celestial bodies continue, and the light from that black hole remains bright and dazzling.

A month passed in the blink of an eye. The first thing Jiang Yang did when he woke up that day was to go to the hall and look at the pattern again.

At that moment, Jiang Yang felt a slight dizziness.

He could clearly see that the pointer had crossed the dividing line between "stable" and "pending" and had truly entered the pending area.

Inside the hall, people looked solemn and whispered among themselves.

The scientist in charge of the matter also looked bewildered.

He murmured, "This is not our fault."

Destroying the black hole's envelope at 1000 million kilometers is the method with the highest probability of entering a stable orbit, calculated through simulations conducted by pooling global resources.

If even this can't get a black hole into a stable orbit... then disrupting its envelope elsewhere is even less likely.

He looked up at the ceiling, his gaze seemingly piercing through to the black hole about 30 million kilometers away from Earth: "Or... given the current structure of the solar system, is a stable orbit really possible?"

Jiang Yang remained silent. After a long while, he sighed softly, "The situation is still uncertain; perhaps there will be a turning point later."

"Yes, let's talk about it later."

Another month has quietly passed.

On this day, Jiang Yang came to the hall again and saw that the pointer had crossed the dividing line between the "unstable" and "pending" areas and had truly fallen into the unstable area.

No matter how much hope people had for it during this period, they ultimately failed to stop its tendency to shift to the left.

(End of this chapter)