"What?"
"130 billion kilometers?"
When they saw the results of the data analysis, not only was Zou Ying stunned, but several older members of the base's senior staff, including Zhong Deyuan, also widened their eyes.
For aerospace researchers like them, that distance was far too short, far too close!
Although the entire solar system had a radius of only 15 billion kilometers, even Voyager 1, the farthest-ranging spacecraft humanity had launched, had currently traveled only 23 billion kilometers from Earth.
Voyager 1 had been launched back in September 1977, in the previous century, and had flown for a full 35 years before barely leaving the solar system.
But in a universe where distances were routinely measured in light-years, 130 billion kilometers was merely the distance light traveled in five days.
"Quick, pull up the signal source's coordinates on the star chart."
"Then add the timing of that earlier Solar Flare to the coordinate axes!" As Elder Zhong stared at the data, he seemed to recall something and hurriedly instructed the technician to recalculate it according to his requirements.
The technician soon understood what Elder Zhong meant. After the parameters were entered again, a three-dimensional star map centered on the solar system was projected before everyone as a virtual image.
After the Sun at the center of the star map flashed outward in Morse code, faint, visible ripples of light spread continuously outward from the center of the solar system.
With the calculation starting ten days before Chen Jue's crash landing on Earth, the light from the first Solar Flare came to an abrupt halt when it swept across the spatial map to the signal source, 130 billion kilometers away.
Next came electromagnetic waves of a special frequency fed back from that signal source. They traveled back to Earth at the