Hot Wavelength

Chapter 22 (Hot Jupiter 2): The Boundary
In December 2029, Liangguo Sazhou Rocket City

Daphne and Michael returned to Rocket City, Saskatchewan from Golden State and spent the weekend together. Michael made fried eggs and a vegetable salad for breakfast, while Daphne took a sip of unsweetened coffee. It was rich and slightly bitter, but she felt sweet inside.

What an outstanding man! Daphne had praised Michael in her heart more than once. Although she considered herself an intelligent and sunny beautiful girl, being able to know and love Michael far exceeded her expectations of love. Daphne felt that she had been blessed by God and secretly vowed to cherish this relationship.

The weather was nice, and the two of them snuggled together on an outdoor bench under the porch. Daphne seemed to suddenly remember something and asked Michael:

“Martha told me that she learned a secret through an informant: the sealed theories of Nikola Tesla could create a super energy source. Have you heard of it?”

Michael straightened up, turned his head slightly, looked directly into Daphne's eyes, thought for a moment, and said:
“Dear Daphne, I have no secrets from you, neither from my personal life nor my business plans. But there are some things I must keep confidential, so I cannot answer your question.”

Daphne had asked the question casually, but Michael's answer surprised her. She sat up straight, wondering if Martha was telling the truth.
"As far as I know, your company launched a probe targeting Enceladus. Is it in the search for life beyond Earth?" Daphne asked.

Michael Max understood that Daphne's question stemmed from mere curiosity. The Enceladus probe was launched by a commercial company, and if its purpose was to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life, there was nothing to keep secret.

But Michael knew in his heart that he had a duty of secrecy to keep his plans to build the first superluminal power station on Enceladus, or the experiment designed by Professor Braun to verify Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity, and he could not tell Daphne about them.

Michael did not answer Daphne's question directly, but instead started a discussion with her along the lines of extraterrestrial life: carbon-based life forms are composed of organic matter, but where does organic matter come from?

Recent research suggests that the substances that form life on Earth, including amino acids and proteins, likely originated from comets that collided with Earth, meaning that organic matter is neither "self-produced" nor unique to Earth.

Candidate celestial bodies that also contain organic matter include comets and asteroids in the asteroid belt, as well as Europa and Enceladus. Scientists have detected phosphorus in the spectrum of ejecta from Enceladus's surface, strongly suggesting the possibility of life beneath its icy shell.

If Earth is not special, and organic matter and even life are widely distributed in the solar system, then the next question is: is the solar system special? The Milky Way galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars; is the matter that forms life also widely distributed there?

Faced with the vast universe, humanity's technological level and observation capabilities are very limited. Not to mention extraterrestrial life, we have only discovered more than 5000 exoplanets so far.

It's important to know that, according to scientists' estimates, the Milky Way alone may contain hundreds of billions of planets.

In its search for exoplanets located in the habitable zones of stars, Liangguo launched the K-space telescope, targeting a specific region of the sky 1500 light-years from Earth.

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered in this region, and surprisingly, the vast majority of them are much larger than Earth, even larger than Jupiter.

Astronomers had to change the unit of measurement for the radius of exoplanets from comparison with Earth to comparison with Jupiter; that is, the size of exoplanets is measured in units of Jupiter.

Why are the discovered planets all so large? Scientists have offered an explanation: it may be due to selective observation. With the same observational capabilities, larger satellites are easier to detect.

But another anomaly is even more troubling: the exoplanets are all very close to their parent stars, their "Jupiter" is almost touching the "Sun".

Jupiter is 5.2 astronomical units from the Sun, which is more than 7 million kilometers away, while most exoplanets are closer to their parent planets than Mercury.

Some planets have a semi-major axis of only a few million kilometers, resulting in extremely high surface temperatures, sometimes reaching over 2000 degrees Celsius. Astronomers call these large and hot planets "hot Jupiters".

This observation seems to point to the same question: Is the solar system special?

If the general rule is that planets are larger than Jupiter, closer to their parent planets, and hotter, while our Jupiter is relatively far from the Sun, with the asteroid belt, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury located inside its orbit, is this atypical distribution of planets in the solar system accidental or formed under some special physical mechanism?

What physical mechanism prevents our Jupiter from getting closer to the Sun? Is it simply that humanity is lucky?
As Stephen Hawking once said, it is clearly not humble enough for humans to think that the sun or the earth is the center of the universe.

Daphne believes that the solar system is certainly not special! Our Jupiter just happens to be far from the sun, making its habitable zone wide enough. There must be some reasonable physical mechanism behind this, but humans just haven't realized it yet.

The two became more and more excited as they talked. Daphne added, "The solar system is quite special as the cradle of life. Earth is located in the habitable zone, while Jupiter is far away, separated by the asteroid belt and Mars. If Jupiter were like other exoplanets, orbiting inside Mercury's orbit, then let alone intelligent life like humans, Earth would probably have been squeezed into the sun and burned up long ago."

"Faced with the vast universe, humanity is indeed too insignificant. For an action-oriented person like me, driven by curiosity, I always manage to figure out one problem, only to have a whole host of new problems arise." Michael said as he pulled Daphne up and back into the house.

The television on the wall was playing the morning news. One news item caught their attention, and Michael turned up the volume. The news was being broadcast on the Sky High News Channel.

Martha, chief investigative reporter for SkyHigh News, had her face almost fill the entire screen, with a scrolling bar at the bottom displaying the news headline—

In the world of the wealthy, can money truly buy everything?

Martha said in the news that many of the wealthiest people are getting stem cell injections in an attempt to maintain their health and extend their lifespan.

Her investigation revealed that some wealthy individuals who received stem cell injections experienced rejection reactions. To counteract this rejection, the latest treatment involves transfusing the recipients with "original blood" from younger people.

The so-called original blood refers to the blood of healthy people that has not been "contaminated" by modern drugs. The recipients are wealthy people who regularly receive expensive stem cell injections, and the blood donors who provide the original blood are often young people who have grown up in economically underdeveloped primitive tribes.

Martha delivered a passionate speech, raising a sharp moral question:

Can money buy everything? Can "Original Blood" be traded for a price?
Martha on the screen roared, as if she might jump out of the screen at any moment. She subtly hinted that a wealthy man in Saudi Arabia was possibly preparing to make such a deal.

Michael Max unconsciously tightened his grip on Daphne's hand. He wondered if the health problems he'd heard about Prince Harufa in the oil-producing country were due to a rejection reaction to the stem cell injections.

Martha's revelation doesn't seem to be unfounded. Could it be that Prince Harufa really intends to exchange money for "original blood"? This is indeed hard to accept.

Michael told Daphne, “Although I have only met the prince once, I can strongly sense that his moral character is no less than his wealth, and I would rather believe that he would not do such a thing.”

Daphne didn't know Prince Harufa, and she fully agreed with Martha's moral standards, but she had no feelings about the person involved in this news story.

Daphne viewed Martha's news from a different perspective than Michael; she thought, "Martha is truly an all-pervasive reporter."

As if by telepathy, Michael also suddenly realized the nature of Martha's work and her exceptional abilities, and he asked Daphne:

"When Martha met you that day, besides talking about Nikola Tesla's theories and the Enceladus probe I launched, what else did she ask you?"

Daphne tried her best to recall and replied, "She also asked me if there were any limits to my love for you, and whether I would support you in doing anything, such as your experiment that might destroy Saturn's rings."

&
The poem composed of collected verses at the end of the chapter:
I love Junping for his kindness in teaching others. —Ouyang Xiu, Song Dynasty

To whom can I confide my innermost thoughts? — Xu Jizhi, Song Dynasty

Great indeed is Heaven and Earth, giving birth to all things; Yuan, Jia Sidao

The debt of gratitude I have received is immeasurable. — Ding Henian (Ming Dynasty)
(End of this chapter)