I Have an Idea

Several enormous structures rose from the endless sandy wasteland.

Led by Liang Gong, Lin Feng was now inside one of them. It was a colossal Aztec-style pyramid, with a broad, flattened platform at its summit.

"Those structures are dry warehouses for storing dehydrated people. This pyramid is where Mozi's machine for predicting the sun's movements is kept..."

The two climbed the pyramid's long stone steps toward the top, Liang Gong's voice carrying far into the distance.

They had already seen the giant pendulum, the Human Computer, and so on. Now they were heading toward the last one: an artificial model that simulated the sun's movements through mechanical devices.

After much effort, they reached the top. It was something like an observatory. In one corner of the platform stood an astronomical telescope several meters tall, with several smaller telescopes beside it.

Besides the telescopes, there was also something like the Armillary Sphere used in ancient China.

Of course, none of those things drew Lin Feng's gaze the most. What caught his attention was the huge bronze sphere in the center of the platform, two meters in diameter.

The bronze sphere rested atop a complex machine, supported by gears of various sizes.

Since no one was operating it, the gears were all motionless.

There was a square pit beneath the machine, where people could push a turntable to provide power for the machinery above.

This was the artificial model—the designer's conceptual double-shell universe model.

Once, the designer had hoped to use this model to predict the sun's movements...

"The machine's designer assumed that the universe was a great hollow sphere suspended in a sea of fire. There were countless small holes and one large hole in the sphere. Light from the sea of fire passed through those openings, becoming the stars and sun seen by people on the ground..." Liang Gong explained as they walked.

After circling the sphere once, Lin Feng asked in confusion, "What was the designer thinking? According to this physical model, wouldn't the distances to the sun and stars have to remain fixed? Didn't he consider such an obvious flaw?"

Liang Gong nodded. "That's right. So the designer adopted a double-layered structure. The sphere was divided into inner and outer shells. The sky was on the inner shell, while the outer shell had a large hole. Light entered through that large hole into the space between the shells, where it reflected and scattered, filling the space between them with light."

"The light passed through the small holes in the inner shell and became the stars we saw. As for the sun, it was a patch of light cast onto the inner shell by the sea of fire behind the large hole in the outer shell."

Lin Feng shook his head. "The sun changes size, and it can even become a flying star. This model can't explain that."

"No, it can. The outer shell expands and contracts. The designer believed the sea of fire provided power to the shell, keeping it in constant motion. And because the power of the sea of fire was unevenly distributed, the shell sometimes expanded and sometimes contracted. That was the phenomenon of the sun growing larger and smaller on the ground. Flying stars could be explained by black clouds outside the sea of fire..."

Liang Gong's expression was somewhat complicated as her slender hand gently stroked the cold metal shell.

Lin Feng could empathize to some extent. After all, he had experienced a Chaotic Era himself and witnessed that kind of living hell firsthand.

If this were merely a game, he would not have felt much. But this was something real, something that existed in reality—the very thing the Trisolarans were facing.

After thinking for a moment, Lin Feng said, "Actually, the problem of the Three Suns isn't all that difficult to solve."

He thought of the main quest this game had already abandoned: solving the problem of the suns.

"What are you going to do? Become a prophet and predict the sun's movements?"

The Hanfu Girl tilted her head toward Lin Feng. She had seen far too many people try to solve the sun problem. They either went mad, became despondent, or accepted reality.

Lin Feng shook his head. What a joke. The three-body problem was already enough to make one's head ache just looking at it, so how could anyone predict it? Lin Feng's idea was much more crude and direct. He explained.

"I've always favored changing nature. Man can conquer nature. If the suns are creating problems for me, then I'll try to change the suns themselves."

"The three-body problem has many possible outcomes. Perhaps two of the suns collide, or perhaps one sun gets flung away, allowing the other two to form a stable system."

Three-body motion had outcomes. Lin Feng remembered that in his previous life, people had used computers to simulate three-body motion. They could not achieve a perfect simulation, but ninety percent accuracy was still possible.

Lin Feng had seen some of the results: stars colliding, two stars forming a stable binary system, or one star being flung away like a glob of phlegm that had been stuck in someone's throat for a thousand years.

In Lin Feng's view, they could artificially intervene in such outcomes and guide the result of the three-body motion toward the situation they wanted.

"Why not try to artificially intervene in the three-body motion and guide the three-body system into becoming a stable binary system?" Lin Feng asked.

"You want to push the suns? You're dreaming, do you know that? Do you know how many resources that would require?" Liang Gong retorted speechlessly.

"Don't be so hasty. Let me finish." Lin Feng raised a hand to stop Liang Gong.

"Of course I know that pushing a star is fundamentally unrealistic, but I never said I wanted to use 'pushing.'"

Move the suns by some other method? Liang Gong fell into thought.

"Then you plan to..."

Lin Feng smiled faintly. "Use Antimatter. Reduce a star's mass, then guide the three-body system into naturally flinging one of the suns away."

"..." Liang Gong stared blankly after hearing Lin Feng's idea, then sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have believed you would come up with anything reasonable."

"You ignored the mass of a star and immediately brought up Antimatter. Leaving aside whether it's even possible to produce such a massive amount of Antimatter, do you know how many times the mass of Earth a star has? Even if you turned the entire Earth into Antimatter and threw it into the sun, the amount of solar mass reduced would be negligible."

Lin Feng looked at her strangely and asked, "Why would you think that was what I meant? I never said I would use a planet's own matter to produce Antimatter. Anyone with half a brain knows you couldn't produce enough Antimatter that way to throw into the sun."

"Then you... Wait! Could it be..."

Shock appeared on Liang Gong's face. Lin Feng's idea had frightened her.

If not a planet, then only a star remained!

Lin Feng explained, "A sun's nuclear fusion naturally releases antiprotons and positrons. We only need to set up a sufficiently large electric field in the sun's orbit, then use the positrons and antiprotons released by the sun to accelerate the consumption of one sun's mass."

According to Lin Feng's plan, they would construct many Solar Satellites. The cores of these Solar Satellites would not be large, but they would have long metal wires. Once electricity flowed through those wires, they would form a giant net made of electric fields.

Positrons and antiprotons were both charged and could be deflected by electric fields. The Solar Satellites could therefore deflect the positrons and antiprotons naturally released by the sun's nuclear fusion back into the sun.