Chapter 700 - 680: The Old Ginger is Still Spicy

What Barry considered a "misjudgment" at Livingston Observatory was, of course, mistaken. In fact, it was not only Livingston that had detected it, Hanford Observatory and Italy’s VIRGIN Observatory had all detected the presence of GW180509.

Although GW180509 was low-powered, it was too close, and gravitational waves spread without a dead angle. The frequency was also right at the upper limit of the entire LIGO System.

However, almost 5 minutes after the transmission of GW180509, "Mountain and Sea" completely invaded these advanced observatories. They managed to erase traces of GW180509’s existence before the staff there could notice the anomaly.

It was only because of partial upgrades to the computer system at Livingston Observatory, which physically isolated the feasibility of the invasion, that a leak occurred.

Although "Mountain and Sea" still managed to delay the time, they could not avoid the leakage. Now they could only decide on the next steps through close surveillance.

"Going public with this is not a good thing."

While Barry was beginning to troubleshoot, Lin Ju was discussing with Ye Changsi the response strategy for the gravitational wave incident.

This was already the third night since the incident occurred. In fact, he flew back the next morning, using the excuse of Yu Man’s pregnancy, and then began to deal with one major problem after another with an agonizing headache.

After discovering that Livingston was investigating GW180509, the first decision made was to control the scope of those in the know.

According to the theoretically optimal strategy, of course, it would be to poke it out to the Security Council, and then let the world’s elite think tanks plot to devise massive response plans, mobilizing humanity’s entire force to resist risks.

But this is just an idealized scenario of safety. According to "Mountain and Sea’s" deduction, there’s a 65% chance of triggering the Third World War without exposing the base.

The foundation of the deduction comes from "Mountain and Sea’s" all-pervasive intelligence-gathering ability. It believes that the probability of all humanity uniting is only 5%.

After all, if it’s necessary to mobilize the world’s potential to fend off an alien civilization invasion, it means another division of the world with a perfectly valid reason.

The complexity of the interests involved is enough to send shivers down one’s spine just by the description in words, and "Mountain and Sea" has also brought up a factor that has been overlooked: religion.

Besides domestic influence, the power of religion is not to be underestimated. The variables caused by the confirmation of an alien civilization’s existence are unimaginable.

According to "Mountain and Sea’s" recently summarized intelligence, even the M incident has already caused severe instability in the beliefs of those aware of it and deserves vigilance.

Such a Third World War would be completely different from previous imaginations, and the possibility of a completely united front against external threats merely exists.

Of course, there is another crucial factor: the think tank nurtured by the base—the Cosmic Sociology Research group. They have used "Mountain and Sea" to conduct a lot of analysis, and in the end, they believe that the "malicious value" of GW180509’s existence is less than 30%.

GW180509 confirmed the existence of an alien civilization, indicating not only the existence of aliens but also that they have formed an intelligent civilization. Their scientific and technological expertise surpassed that of humanity a long time ago.

The last point is easy to judge. A civilization capable of building a (presumably small) gravitational wave emitter on Mars must have already reached a very high level in physics and mathematics.

The CSR Group, who felt they had been freeloading for more than half a year, finally got some work. Starting with GW180509, the subject of cosmic sociology could finally be announced as existing, and then they immediately began to play their role.

After three days of continuous efforts, they proposed several basic conjectures:

First, when the alien civilization placed the gravitational wave emitter, there was life in the Solar System;

The main basis for this is the targeting nature of the signal. The focus on thermonuclear bombs is particularly strong. Although a 1.5-million-ton thermonuclear bomb is terrifying, there are many physical phenomena in the Solar System that release more energy than this. There must be some strict selection criteria that make nuclear bombs (and only those detonating in the cosmos) able to trigger it.

This further explains that the trigger condition must be an artificial explosion, which presupposes that there must be "people" in the Solar System, possibly on Earth, Mars, Venus, or other planets.

Second, from the first conjecture, the hostility of the alien civilization is not high, at least they should not have a strong consciousness of erasing risk;

If "they" think that the civilization of the Solar System could reach the conditions to trigger the signal, then if they really wanted to erase potential threats, they should have destroyed life when it was still in the primitive stage, rather than waiting for the threat to grow.

Eliminating a group of primitives is simple; humans were so scarce in ancient times that even killing them one by one wouldn’t take much time, let alone a civilization capable of mastering gravitational wave communication.

Even in the 20th century and earlier eras, it was possible that the emitter was placed then. After all, before that time, humankind could not detect what happened on Mars, yet they were powerless before an extraterrestrial civilization.

Although we cannot yet say that the alien civilization is friendly, at least when they placed the "emitter," "it" likely had no hostility.

Third, there is a serious connection between the anomalies on Titan and Mars.

Again, the possibility that the Solar System has been visited by two waves of alien civilizations is so small it can be dismissed. If there were that many alien civilizations, we would not still be unable to find anything up to now.

Fourth, the receiving end is nearby and will not be too far away—the furthest being no more than 100 light-years.

Even if the Solar System is located in the "suburban" areas of the Milky Way, within a radius of 17 light-years, there are 50 stars, and within a 10 light-year range from Earth, there are 10 stars. There are too many possible places for habitation.