Secrets of the Stars – 5: Beacon
“Object ESO-78/931 by itself is common. A rocky dwarf planet without atmosphere. Even the fact that the dwarf planet is not orbiting a star and instead drifts across the galactic rim by itself happens more often than one might think. But the structure that had been erected there more than 60,000 years ago is everything but common. A wide network of lasers feeds into a central light tower that emits the collected energy into space. A beacon, if you will.
Where does the light go? Well, it seems to be aimed at a recently born star. Recent in a cosmic scale, since the star itself is about 60,000 years old. The star is so young that it doesn’t even have a name. The beacon will reach him in about 10,000 years. Whatever happens then, nobody knows. Unfortunately I won’t be around to witness it, but it will be interesting.
How I even found ESO-78/931? I flew into the light like a moth. I was on an exploration flight to find interstellar objects between two rather close stars when I was suddenly blinded. Since I was obviously flying fast it took some time to understand what just happened. After that I just had to follow the light to reach the beginning or the end. Luckily I went into the right direction right away and after a few weeks of jumping back and forth I found ESO-78/931 and its beacon.
Since my discovery there were some efforts to find the energy source of this installation. But so far none of the necessary drilling operations could find anything but rock. Probably the installation is powered from somewhere near the core, together with whatever controls ESO-78/931 itself. Because the dwarf planet not just simply flies through space, but is continuously pointed at the young star. And that should be impossible.”
Another part of the “Secrets of the Stars” series. A rather dark scene. The idea had sounded much better in my head than in the final result. But in the time between I learned a lot about the electromagnetic spectrum, somewhat questioning the concept.
Created with Blender 4.2.
