Martin poured himself a steaming cup of coffee, sat contentedly in front of the thick window, and gazed out at the pitch-black night sky. Full of anticipation, he said to Luke, who was busy taking selfies:
"Today is the last polar night. I have a feeling I'm definitely going to see colored auroras."
"Remember to take one for my fans, thanks!" Luke continued twisting his body, trying to find the perfect pose.
"No problem. Just remember to wash all my socks this week."
Duty shifts were always painful, especially with a "deeply narcissistic" colleague. Under normal circumstances Martin would rather stay in the back machine room tinkering with equipment than watch Luke endlessly showing off his hot female fans. The guy who thought he looked like Orlando Bloom was practically the public enemy of Amundsen-Scott Station. Almost every female visitor wanted a photo with him, and he never refused anyone—like the old, broken New York subway. Station chief Conner had sworn he would ship Luke back to the old streets of Brooklyn before Christmas to quell the "rage" of the forty-plus male scientists from twelve countries. Still, Martin and the others secretly hoped they could hang the "processed" Luke from the entrance flagpole as a permanent tourist attraction.
"Oh, shit! Aurora! Purple aurora!" Forty-year-old Martin suddenly shouted like an excited little boy. "Look, Luke! Look!" He sprang out of his chair, flung down his teacup, grabbed his jacket, gloves, and camera, and rushed outside like a horny terrier desperate to mate.
"Hat!" Luke yelled after him.
The exaggerated slam of the door drowned out his good intention. Minus-thirty-degree air rushed in. Luke shrank his neck, pulled his clothes tighter, and sat down in front of the computer. The monitor was still as boring as ever. In the background, neutrinos occasionally flew past the deep-ice detectors, releasing faint light signals like fireflies on a summer night, flickering intermittently on the screen. This often reminded Luke of his grandma's farm back in Texas—the clear night sky full of quiet stars, with only the big dog Buddy occasionally barking.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory stood alone deep in the Antarctic ice sheet, facing the Amundsen-Scott Station one kilometer away, like the forward outpost on the frozen planet Weyta-4 in Star Trek, where Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was busy perfecting his whimsical "long-distance transporter system." IceCube itself was born from scientists' grand ambitions. Starting in 2005, scientists from twelve countries spent five years building this, the world's largest neutrino detector, full of dreams and challenges. They moved red boring machines across the ancient ice near the South Pole, using 200,000 gallons of high-pressure hot water to drill eighty-six holes two and a half kilometers deep. In each hole they lowered a cable connected to sixty sensors, then linked all 5,160 sensors into the main optical-fiber network, forming a neutrino telescope array covering nearly one cubic kilometer of ice. The core of the detector was the high-precision Digital Optical Module (DOM)—a transparent resin sphere about forty centimeters in diameter, sensitive enough to capture every photon's gleam. When a neutrino collided with an atom in the ice, it produced a muon and Cherenkov radiation, emitting a blue flash. That fleeting flicker was captured by the sensors and recorded as an electrical signal for research and analysis. Compared with the scientists' burning passion, the neutrinos from the depths of the cosmos were clearly much colder. In seven years IceCube had detected only eighty-nine high-energy neutrinos, making every wait feel tedious and endless.
Suddenly a small red square popped up in the spectrum monitoring window. Luke habitually glanced at the virtual array monitoring system on the right. A colorful light curtain appeared in the upper-right corner of the array, with a clear red spherical structure in the middle—the classic signature of a rare high-energy electron neutrino colliding with an atomic nucleus and releasing energy. The model showed the neutrino's energy at roughly 290 TeV—thirty times higher than the LHC's maximum. This was the first high-energy neutrino he had seen since arriving at the station. The system issued a high-energy event warning beep and listed a long string of parameters. Capture time: September 22, 2017, 20:54:43 GMT.
"Hey, Martin! Your gift has arrived." Luke grabbed the intercom and shouted excitedly.
"Received." Martin hesitated for a second, then immediately turned and ran down from the roof.
The buzzer was still screaming like a woman with her throat pinched. Martin casually silenced it, flipped through the data, and said to Luke word by word:
"Listen up, kid! According to the rules, you have to name it now, then call Grandpa Carl in Wisconsin."
"Let's call it Buddy, my grandma's Rottweiler." Luke immediately exercised his naming rights. "As for the call, I think you'd better do it. If I mispronounce one more letter, he'll hang me from a lamppost!"
"Good idea!"
Although Martin didn't make it clear which suggestion he agreed with, the far-traveling high-energy neutrino finally had a name. He dialed Carl's number and said "sincerely":
"Good afternoon, Professor! Luke has a surprise for you. He really wants to tell you himself. Come on, kid."
Luke's handsome face flushed red with nervousness; his clear blue eyes turned into an abyss of fear, as if he were alone in the school's dark-red science museum. In his eyes, every conversation with his former advisor was a nightmare thesis defense. All his seemingly profound insights looked like kindergarten textbooks in front of this "eccentric castle master." Carl could always spot the tiny "adjustments" hidden in equations longer than an interstate highway. Luke took the phone with trepidation and said carefully:
"Hello, Professor. Fifteen minutes ago we detected a high-energy electron neutrino with 290 TeV energy. Source coordinates: RA 77.4°, DEC 5.7°. Preliminary determination is Orion direction; precise position needs more data. We also gave it a name… Buddy."
"Send me the detailed data and issue an event report to the GCN. Tell them to put on Grandma's reading glasses and look carefully." Carl issued orders like a king. He was the leader of the IceCube project. "Buddy is a good name."
After hanging up, Luke let out a long breath. This was the first time Carl had ever praised him—an historic moment. He clenched his fist, excitedly gave Martin a "Yes!" gesture, looking as proud as a high-school boy who had just lost his virginity.
"No matter how long the night, dawn will come." Martin recited haughtily, then immediately switched to a contemptuous mask. "Do as the king commanded."
The IceCube-170922A event alert was immediately sent through the collaboration network to fifteen astronomical observatories and four space telescopes worldwide. The MAGIC telescope system on the Canary Islands—the world's highest-resolution high-energy gamma-ray telescope—aimed its two giant telescopes at the sky, staring at distant Orion and precisely locking onto the protagonist: the blazar TXS0506+056, a supermassive black hole. It detected gamma rays up to 400 GeV. NASA's Fermi Space Telescope, ESO's VLT, and South Africa's SALT also confirmed MAGIC's observations. Multi-wavelength results from gamma rays to visible light all showed that the high-energy neutrino Buddy and the gamma rays came from the blazar TXS0506+056.
In the following days IceCube miraculously detected another twenty-two high-energy neutrinos, with energies ranging from TeV to PeV. The entire station's scientists were boiling over. GCN collaboration data poured in continuously. The bone-chilling Antarctic suddenly became steaming hot. Professor Carl returned to the station the moment the polar night ended and took personal command. He liked to handle everything himself and even more enjoyed the feeling of controlling the overall situation. Luke was so excited that every cell in his body was restless. He and his colleagues had gone two days without sleep, glued to the monitors, eagerly waiting for the next high-energy neutrino.
But Martin looked preoccupied. For days he had been poring over IceCube's historical data, hardly leaving his seat.
"Luke, come here quick." Martin said anxiously.
Luke pushed his chair back, kicked the floor, and slid over. The space in front of his seat was immediately filled by colleagues crowding in from both sides.
"Don't be impatient. You'll get your own Buddy too." Luke comforted the haggard man in front of him.
Martin ignored the teasing. He pointed at the coordinate map on the screen and said in a low voice:
"I checked all the historical data. Buddy isn't the first neutrino from Orion to reach IceCube—it's just the first big one. Before that, from September 2014 to March 2015—110 days—many neutrinos from the Orion direction were detected. Most of those little ones were filtered out as background noise and we didn't notice them, but nineteen TeV-level high-energy neutrinos were inexplicably overlooked. That's not surprising; with so much data we always miss some. But the strange thing is, these neutrinos don't belong with Buddy. Among the new twenty-two big ones, three also show the same situation. They have a slight directional difference from Buddy, not caused by the two different jets colliding inside that violent blazar. I tried more precise direction reconstruction—the actual coordinates are RA 75.55°, DEC 7.24°."
"Betelgeuse?"
"Yes, Betelgeuse." Martin was certain.
"What does that mean? It's still in the red-supergiant stage."
Martin was silent for a moment, then said cautiously:
"Based on the captured high-energy electron neutrinos, it may have already entered the carbon-fusion stage. Unlike low-mass stars that only do hydrogen-helium fusion, high-mass stars in late evolution reach core temperatures above 600 million degrees Celsius and enter the CNO cycle, greatly accelerating burning and releasing large numbers of high-energy electron neutrinos. That means, if Betelgeuse has entered carbon fusion, with its mass twenty-three times the Sun's, its remaining lifespan is only about 700 years."
"Don't worry, Martin. It won't kill us. I remember from first grade that Betelgeuse's rotation axis is at a 20-degree angle to Earth. If it really explodes, we can enjoy a spectacular cosmic fireworks show." Luke twisted his chair and said unhurriedly, "But this is indeed an important discovery. I suggest you talk to Professor Carl. You need more support."
Martin clearly accepted Luke's suggestion. He repeated the calculation, confirmed it was correct, printed the analysis report, had Luke check it, then put the file in his pocket and dragged him to find Carl at the station.
The professor glanced at the corners of the pages, then handed the report to Station Chief Conner across the desk. While listening to Martin's report, he pointed at the office door and made a closing gesture. Luke quickly stood up, shut the door, and sat back on the sofa. Conner returned the report to the professor, picked up a Cohiba cigar from the small box on the desk, sniffed it, and said with slight relief:
"Good thing it was our people who found it."
Professor Carl seemed somewhat unconcerned. He looked at Martin and Luke, thought for a moment, and said:
"This may not be just our business. Someone else will find it eventually—Americans, Russians, Europeans, Chinese… maybe they already have. From a biological perspective, we're not much more advanced than the penguins outside; we're just the product of various evolutionary accidents that gave us the illusion of self-importance."
Martin was confused by the professor's "theory of evolution" and asked uneasily:
"Did I… step on a giant dinosaur egg?"
"Hahaha…" The professor burst out laughing and hurried to reassure them. "No, no, Martin. You didn't do anything wrong. The giant beast stepped on its own egg. But now you two need to go back to Washington. Station Chief Conner will go with you; he'll tell you everything. First, though, keep it secret."
The men at the station cheered once again. Station Chief Conner had finally kept his promise—before Christmas he was sending Luke back to America. No one would disrupt the "ecological balance" of Antarctica anymore. The brand-new C-130 Hercules transport plane took off, kicking up clouds of white powder, roaring toward the young North American continent.
On another plane in the Northern Hemisphere, Yan Ran closed the IceCube-170922A event report he had just finished reading, gazed out the porthole at the ancient vault of heaven, and couldn't help sighing. What an advanced and mysterious prehistoric civilization this was! Their depth had already surpassed the farthest boundary that thought could reach.
In the ripples of spacetime, humanity had never felt so small.