We Were Thrown Out

"Jupiter is gone? How is that possible?!"

Yue Yuan's first reaction upon receiving the news at the base was disbelief. The Sun's explosion had been immensely powerful, but Jupiter's sheer mass and its great distance from the Sun were facts. How could it possibly have been pushed away?

"Sorry, I phrased that inaccurately. Jupiter hasn't disappeared; Callisto's Tidal Lock has been broken." Gan De, who had come to deliver the news, gave an apologetic look and explained, "We need more data before we can make a further assessment."

"Are you working on it?" Yue Yuan rose anxiously.

"We are. A larger telescope is being transported up there now. Xiao Zhang from the Astronomy Department followed up as soon as he discovered the situation. By my estimate, the first batch of observation parameters should be coming in soon. We'll know the specifics right away." Gan De stroked his newly trimmed, sparse white hair and spoke without the slightest hurry.

Yue Yuan was quite satisfied with that level of efficiency. He nodded. "Let's go to the data center."

With that, he took the lead out of the office. However, when he reached the door, he paused and turned back to instruct Zhu Pete, who was still inside. "Pi Te, the work of returning to the surface can't stop. Follow up on this matter and coordinate the various departments. Get all kinds of facilities built on the surface as soon as possible."

"Yes!"

After giving his instructions, Yue Yuan bounded toward the base's temporary data center.

Gan De followed close behind.

Before long, the two arrived at the data center on the lower level. The moment they entered, they saw a large group of staff busily processing data. Some moved back and forth through the vast center, passing documents; others discussed their views while studying the data. It looked chaotic, yet everything was in perfect order.

Yue Yuan waved at the crowd and nodded to signal that they should continue with their work and not stand on ceremony. Then he and Gan De pushed through the crowd and headed straight for the astronomical data receiving station.

The moment he reached the station, Gan De addressed the woman at the console. "Xiao Yu, has the data come through?"

"Dr. Gan, you're here!" Hearing Gan De's voice, the woman called Xiao Yu turned around to greet him. Then she spotted Yue Yuan as well, and her expression immediately grew serious. "Base Chief, you're here too!"

"Mm." Yue Yuan nodded to her, then pointed at the data receiving station. "Get to the point."

Xiao Yu looked to be around thirty. She had shoulder-length short hair and well-maintained skin, making her look like a young woman barely in her twenties. Turning back to the console, she operated it as she spoke. "The first batch of data has already been transmitted back. Doctor, please take a look."

After a series of operations, lines of data appeared on the large screen.

Gan De stared intently at the screen, but the longer he looked, the more tightly his brows furrowed.

Yue Yuan saw his expression and sensed that things were not looking good. Sure enough, Gan De lifted his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. As he slowly opened them again, he sighed. "The situation is far worse than we predicted!"

Without waiting for Yue Yuan to speak, Gan De continued, "During the preliminary observations, we only believed that Jupiter's Tidal Lock on Callisto had been broken. We thought the side where our base is located had merely turned away to face the dark universe. But judging from this new observational data, it's far more than that."

Far more than that? Yue Yuan's heart skipped a beat. "Explain in detail."

It was not that Yue Yuan could not look for himself. The screen was currently filled with streams of raw data and all kinds of highly specialized curves. Data that had not undergone secondary or tertiary processing was simply incomprehensible to nonprofessionals.

Gan De realized that as well, so he instructed Xiao Yu, "Xiao Yu, import the data into the celestial simulation system. Set the speed to thirty times."

"Okay."

Xiao Yu swiftly opened the celestial simulation software and expertly imported the data into the system line by line.

Yue Yuan watched as the display on the large screen switched to a dynamic 3D simulation of the Solar System. As Xiao Yu worked, the simulation, which had originally been operating normally, began to change.

First, the Sun's brightness abruptly increased. Light more than twenty magnitudes brighter filled the entire screen. After the intense radiance erupted, a red, white, and yellow cloud-like mass rapidly swelled and spread from where the Sun had originally been, refreshing frame by frame.

As the solar eruption spread, Mercury, Venus, and Earth were swallowed directly by a scorching sea before vanishing completely from the screen. Mars's orbit became a cloud of dust, and then its name was erased from the simulation as well. The Asteroid Belt was swept completely clean.

The incomparably powerful Solar Wind produced by the eruption shifted from white to blue as it swept outward in wave after wave. Like a demon expanding through the stars, it devoured its own children one after another until none remained.

After the violent eruption swept through, only the names of several enormous Gaseous Planets hung forlornly amid the blazing cloud mass.

A replay of death. Seeing this, Yue Yuan felt terrible. This was not watching a cosmic wonder; it was enduring mental torture.

Suppressing his grief, he shifted his gaze outward and found the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.

Jupiter was still there, though its brightness seemed to have increased considerably.

According to the data, Jupiter's surface temperature had soared directly from minus 164 degrees Celsius, breaking through ten thousand degrees within two days and continuing to rise. On the eighteenth day, it reached a peak of 17,900 degrees Celsius, then hovered around that temperature.

Jupiter had been ignited.

At the same time, its mass was gradually decreasing, indicating that Jupiter's atmosphere was being blown away by the super-powerful Solar Wind. Correspondingly, its surface temperature slowly began to fall over time.

More than two months later, its surface temperature dropped below ten thousand degrees Celsius and continued to decline slowly. After four and a half years of cooling, its surface temperature would fall below zero degrees Celsius again as the temperature of space decreased.

Its mass, meanwhile, continued to shrink. However, as the temperature fell, the mass being blown away would gradually be checked, eventually stabilizing at a certain value—roughly thirty percent of its original mass.

That was because Jupiter was a gaseous giant, and it had suffered catastrophic losses of gaseous mass.

Yue Yuan studied the local details carefully. At that moment, he noticed that Jupiter's orbit was represented by a solid circle and a dashed arc.

He nodded to himself, understanding what it meant. The solid circle represented Jupiter's original orbit, while the dashed line represented its new orbit after the change. Not only were the orbits shown with solid and dashed lines, but the Rotating Shaft was also marked with solid and dashed lines.

This indicated that Jupiter's orbit had changed, and its Rotating Shaft had tilted by a certain angle as well.

Jupiter was not the only one. Saturn had suffered the same fate.

Yue Yuan searched the screen but found no trace of Callisto in Jupiter's original orbit. He spoke up. "Where is Callisto?"

"Here." Gan De pointed toward a dark area on the screen and had Xiao Yu highlight it as a conspicuous bright point.

As a string of constantly changing numerical labels appeared, Yue Yuan saw that tiny point of light.

"This..." Yue Yuan frowned deeply.