Chapter 340 The Results Are In
"Do you expect the UN to come to a good resolution?" the next reporter asked.novE)lb(1n
"Our hopes are high, since it's the only way for us to be prepared by the time they arrive".
"When are they going to arrive?" the reporter followed up.
"We aren't sure. Our observation period hasn't been long enough to determine that, so it depends on whether they're accelerating, coasting, or decelerating. Flying a spaceship isn't like driving a car—you accelerate part of the way, then coast part of the way, then decelerate part of the way. If you plan it right, acceleration and deceleration should take the same amount of time, but we don't have time to get into the more complex physics behind it. Basically, our estimates right now put them arriving around ten years from now at the soonest, and no later than twenty-eight years from now. So we need to get our affairs in order and prepare so we can face them as a united front within the next ten years." Alexander pointed to the next reporter.
"Do you think we're capable of facing a civilization that can travel at a quarter of light speed?"
"At the moment, there's zero chance of that. But if we unite as a species and work together, pooling our resources and pouring them into research, then, by the time they arrive... we'll be ready. All the divisions that plague humanity right now have developed us to where we are, but they also hold us back. Think of humanity as a train. Right now, there are two hundred train cars, each with one engine pulling each of them. But if we put all the cars together and link them up with all the engines, the train will go much faster." He moved on to the next reporter.
"What are the results you expect from the UNSC meeting?"
"A unified military front and a unitary representative of humanity."
Alexander continued answering question after question for more than an hour without stumbling once. Finally, he directed the reporters to the Edenian Space Agency website, where they could find more information, and the Edenian Official Press Department, where they could submit further questions to be answered in the form of either a press release or a website FAQ.
...
The world immediately reacted. All countries with space programs announced that they would immediately halt all current observation missions and redirect them to the given coordinates. Most hoped to disprove the Edenian discovery, while a few rare supporters hoped to prove it. Beyond that, physicists and mathematicians around the world began working on analyzing the data provided both by Eden and the results of their own countries' investigations, ironically proving what Alexander had said about needing to come together as a united front true.
Still, when the experts and authorities began their investigations, whether they supported Eden or not, they were surprised when they dug into the data.
The main surprise was the sheer amount of it. There were hundreds of satellite images gathered by Eden, and terabytes of data overall. Thus, people with faster internet connections would download it, copy it onto portable hard drives and super high-capacity USB drives, then mail it to their fellow researchers.
The reason for the exaggerated file size was because it contained many proofs and new equations, as well as practically an entirely new branch of orbital and cosmic mechanics. And each equation required its own set of proofs, plus redundant equations that were solved and proven in different ways. There was virtually no chance that the data was mistaken.
That said, the evidence was so groundbreaking that there existed no specialists in the newly created field of study. Thus, mathematicians and physicists the world over called for quite a few conferences to discuss the formulas, their proofs, and the new branch of physics that had been discovered.
At those conferences, they divvied up the work of checking through the enormous amount of raw data and the interpretations they had been provided of it. Once the initial checking was completed in a distributed format, they would come together again to perform the final checks. Still, it would be an uphill battle; almost no one could believe that Eden, whose space agency was barely known before the press conference, had people who were smart enough to discover an entirely new branch of physics by themselves.
It would definitely be a bitter pill to swallow for all the ivory tower elites, none of whom had been contacted by anyone in Eden at all beyond headhunting messages from the Coeus Foundation, who wanted to recruit them to lecture at the soon-to-be-completed university campuses in the fledgling nation.
By the second week of hard work by many physicists and mathematicians, they found that the calculations were true. But on the visual confirmation side, things were still being rendered by various supercomputers. Though they were delayed, results were still expected over the next few days after the data verification was finished.
And of course, Eden wasn't involved in the proof and verification process, as that would taint the results. They were occasionally consulted for clarifications, when necessary, but no mathematician or physicist who has ever proven a problem that stumped the entire math or physics world had ever been involved in verifying their own proofs, nor would they in this case.
...
"So what you're telling me is that it's true?" Trump asked during his daily briefing, which had been expanded to add the directors of NASA and DARPA as a result of the specificity of the issue.
"Unfortunately, yes. We finished rendering the images gathered by our equipment, and the results were similar to what the ESA came up with," the director of NASA explained.
"Why does it look like grainy things and dots when the Edenian's data showed things pretty clearly?" Trump asked after he had opened the briefing folder.
"We don't know exactly how they managed to get such detailed data when even the best of our equipment can only capture this. We think it's because of the task-specific deep space satellites they recently launched. Of course, something that's dedicated to doing one thing will do that one thing better than a machine that's broad in application," the director of NASA patiently explained.
"I know you're about to ask for an increase to your budget. We can make it happen, don't worry," Trump said as he pinched his eyebrows. He finally understood why every president entered office with a full head of vibrant hair, but left with sparse gray hair.
He turned to his Chief of Staff and said, "Get the press corps on this. Make the announcement and contact this month's UNSC president and... 'suggest' that they call the emergency session as soon as possible." Trump leaned back in his chair and delved into his thoughts.
'We're even losing the space race now. How the hell can we call ourselves the most advanced nation in the world, yet not be the ones that discovered this? We can't let them take the initiative now, and they should also be thinking the same,' he thought.
As for how they had managed to make the discovery when the object was yet to be visible in the real world, well... that was for the discoverers to explain themselves.
