Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35447404-20180505135118

As of the moment I'm writing this I'm currently an employee of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Inteligence) Observatory on a Senior position and I urge readers of this message to share it publicly as this alert concerns the future of humanity, our planet and of all space exploration.

Three weeks ago from this moment SETI intercepted a most unusual transmission. Its signal came from outer space without question. What's unusual about it is that it originated very close to Earth's higher atmosphere, too far to be from an artificial satellite, but in the vicinity of our planet. After being decrypted it yielded a text message written in English, the contents of which you're about to read. Its contents unnerved me and all of the people who had access to it. After the team that transcribed it up brought it to the attention of the people in charge we spent weeks discussing its nature and, finally, the higher-ups of the observatory ordered us not to divulge this find to the public and decided to officially regard it as a "clever" hoax. The reasoning behind it being that the signal was aimed directly at one of our receivers, that its content was plain English text and was not alien in nature.

Many of my colleagues disagreed with this decision. Clever though one might be, I've never met anyone who had the means to transmit a hoax from so far in the upper atmosphere. The signal clearly originated in space and, though close to Earth, it is definitively from a chunk of empty space. There are no known objects in its source and the fact that it was aimed at our receiver at that precise moment makes it clear that whoever initiated this communication knew what he/she was doing and wanted us to get this message. Below is a full transcript of the text message. I urge you dear reader to consider the implications of every word very carefully.

An alert from the future. Notes from the 2104 Revelation Incident

Ever since the discovery of the first rogue exoplanet in 1998, OTS 44, interest of the scientific community never waned about such objects, which is why when a rogue asteroid was detected so close to our Solar System all were keen to study it as fast as possible. The minor planet previously known as 237 Perplexity was first observed in 2052 by the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope). It received a permanent designation as a rogue exoplanet in 2061, after it was determined that its eccentric trajectory was a result of not being caught by the Sun’s gravity, that it would just pass by our system and was currently on approach. The object had a size and mass comparable to that of the dwarf planet Ceres, was beyond the orbit of Neptune, and has currently been renamed 1 Loki after the incident (a fitting name for this first-of-its-kind, insidious object).

The Revelation Incident started innocently enough. In 2079 a group of scientists led by the UNSEA (United Nations Space Exploration Agency), a successor of the ISA, organized a mission to investigate the origin of this unusual object and learn more about the Cosmos. The probe Revelation was then commissioned and finished being built in 2088. The space ship IRES (International Research and Exploration Ship) Tiresias was assigned to carry the probe and an unmanned space flight was chartered by the agency to deliver it to the vessel, which was, at that time, in the vicinity of Jupiter. The flight launched a year later and after two years in space the probe was successfully delivered and a new course was set for the Tiresias. This was to be the longest space mission ever undertaken by any space vessel, taking 18 years to reach the Perplexity, with scheduled stops along the way to study other solar system objects until it intercepted the asteroid beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The Tiresias spacecraft was 4 years old by the time it received the probe at the Europa International Space Research Facility. It carried a crew of five people led by Captain John Herbert Moses, American, and an experienced astronaut. Between the scheduled stops the crew was to stay in hibernation sleep. The ship reached the rogue minor exoplanet in august 15, 2109 and the crew checked in with mission Command on Earth at the next day. Captain Moses and crew were fine and started preparations to enter the asteroid’s orbit. Finally, august 17, the probe was ready to be deployed. The vehicle was to carry a researcher, american crewmember Jacqueline Meredith, PhD, a planetary geologist. Revelation made contact with the surface of 237 Perplexity at 9:15 (UTC) that day.

The explosion happened immediately. The crew of the IRES Tiresias described a white blinding flash of light, and the energy of the blast killed two crew members instantaneously. Dr. Adriana Dubois, French, medical officer, and Dr. Federico Lombardo, Italian, PhD in Space Chemistry, were crushed by the ship’s very floor. The two remaining crew members, Captain Moses and the Chinese Lieutenant Li Jie Tang sustained many injuries, including bruises, multiple fractures and lacerations. Even though they were seated at the ship’s cockpit, the acceleration caused a great enough force to be exerted on their bodies. The Tiresias’ first communication with Mission Command after the explosion only happened at 13:39 (UTC). Lt. Tang reported Captain Moses knocked out, the ship spinning out of control and instruments going “crazy”. Efforts to stabilize the ship’s rotation along all axis were proving more than the engines could deal with, and the extension of damage to the ship was unknown. Captain Moses woke up 2 hours later, and the two men couldn’t bring the vessel under control.

Observers around the Solar System saw the moment of the explosion. A bright flash of light was seen, enough to be visible from earth, by the naked eye, as a star in the night sky. Telescopes everywhere fixed on the explosion’s origin and were unable to see neither the ship nor 237 Perplexity. Mission Command only got a fix of The Tiresias’ position 46 hours after the blast. It was thousands of miles away from the origin and moving at hundreds of miles per second. Telescopes everywhere searched for the missing exoplanet to no avail.

The scientists leading the mission were baffled by these events. No explosion due to mechanical failure of the Revelation probe could cause a blast this large. The whole world caught wind of the news and everywhere on the Solar System minds searched for the answer. It is not known who came to the solution first, as many men and women of science came forth with this thought at that same time: the Revelation probe was Annihilated.

237 Perplexity was composed entirely of anti-matter. This rogue exoplanet was probably ejected from another galaxy, an anti-matter galaxy, and drifted through space aimlessly until it reached our corner of the universe. There is no reason why anti-matter would look different than matter on the macroscopic level and this exoplanet and the incident were proof that probably half the stuff in the night sky is made of anti-matter. Entire galaxies composed entirely of this material probably exist, and there is absolutely no telling them apart. This deathtrap entered our Solar System covertly, and was sprung by human action. The scientific community decided to immediately rename this rogue anti-matter exoplanet 1 Loki, after the Norse god of deceit and trickery. A break from the tradition of naming planets after Greek gods, because of the nature of its constituting elements.

The drama for the IRES Tiresias continued as the ship sped out of control. The rotating motion was only stopped after nine days of constant work by the two survivors. The engines controlling the ship’s angle, pitch and rotation were used to almost breaking point. After stabilizing the disorienting motion the crewmembers discovered their horrible predicament: The Tiresias was still moving away from the Solar System at incredible speed and they’ve reached escape velocity. Even with the ship’s engines at full power, they would never return home. Mission Command decided that even in those conditions, the Crew should point the vessel towards Earth, leave them on at maximum power, and go to hibernation sleep. Their only hope for rescue would be if, after some years, the technology would reach a level sufficient for a space faring vessel to be able to catch them up. With this thin hope these two brave men went to sleep. Three years later all contact with the IRES Tiresias was lost. It was now too far away for anyone to hear.

For people on Earth and human colonies on the Solar System a concern remained: where was the rogue exoplanet and what could it hit. Two years after the incident a team at the ELT found it. It was going too fast for the telescope to track. A huge concerted effort of observatories across the System was made to keep tabs on 1 Loki’s whereabouts and determine its trajectory. It was found, with a sigh of relief, that it was not going to hit Earth. For most of the Earth’s population it was the end of the story, but for scientists, like myself, a planet-sized bomb roaming our solar system was still cause for concern.

It took six years for observations and calculations that made the science community sure enough of the outcome: 1 Loki was going to hit Jupiter in the span of three more years. The huge planet’s gravity well would capture the asteroid and hurl it against itself. There were no predicting the consequences, but the gas giant would lose a bit of its mass. A whole lot more would be ejected as a consequence of it, and there is no telling what all this, plus the force of the impact and the annihilation’s blast could do to the orbits of any of Jupiter’s 69 moons and how all that would affect everything around it. The complexity of the situation was tantalizing.

Missions to hurl spaceships and other sources of mass at 1 Loki have been considered, but the asteroid is going too fast to be intercepted by our current ships with a sure enough point of impact that would take it away of its current trajectory without threatening Earth, Mars, or other objects that could impact orbits around the System.

The delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem can be affected by anything as small as the magnetic reversion of our poles. An event that alters orbits of planets around the system could result in anything. We do not know our fate right now. It hangs in the balance and there’s nothing the world can do but wait. I too am waiting, but have also decided, on a thin hope, to leave this message to the people a hundred years in the past. I have researched time travel all my life, and though I can’t send objects yet, I can send signals. It takes enormous amounts of energy to send a signal a few minutes in the past, but the amount of data sent is enough for a text. I shall keep sending versions of this for however long I can to places where there could be people to take heed of my warning. I hope that enough people, and important ones, can have access to this document. All that is needed to prevent disasters like this is a small change in space mission protocols: send small objects to the surface of any new heavenly body to be explored. A small explosion of Matter/Anti-Matter annihilation would be enough to be seen from afar, but wouldn't upset the delicate balance of our Solar System. I don’t know how this would affect costs of space missions on the past, but seems a small price to pay compared with the anguish of humans everywhere.

Our colonies are not currently self-sustaining enough to ensure a future for humans in outer space in case of Earth’s ecosystem collapsing. All of humankind is at jeopardy because of our mistake. Because of our eagerness to give into the whims of curiosity.

There are ticking bombs out there in the universe, and there is no way to know how many. They should be rare, but take heed of my warning and all of this horror and anguish can be avoided.

Science is the art of making known the unknown. Act as scientists, and make known this alert. September 3, 2118. Dr. Alexa C. Caldwell, American, PhD in Trans Dimensional Physics.

There ends the transcription. The file on this case is currently sealed at SETI. I’m not revealing my full credentials as this could jeopardize my career, but I chose to act as a scientist and heed Alexa’s warning as best as I could. I’m publicizing this copy of the transcript and making this world know there is a new and invisible threat to humanity. Please make this known to as much people as possible, so it may find its way to someone with the power to enact the small change Dr. Alexa pleaded. 