Chapter 422: Wandering Star

The moment the two bridges completed disconnection, Fearless turned around and flew in the other direction, vanishing amid the dark clouds.

"Hopefully he can complete his mission and return safely," said Baron Sisse with a sigh.

"Commander, the princes had shut down Fearless's communication system. We have lost contact with Fearless," reported Dodo anxiously.

"I knew this would happen. The moment the two princes told me that it was a highly important secret mission, I knew that they wouldn't maintain contact with us," said Zhang Xingxing calmly.

"Since they have left, let's ignore Fearless for now. Dodo, how long will it take us to reach our destination?" I asked, shifting the focus back to our operation.

"In 15 minutes, we will reach the outer edge of the three-star system," reported Dodo.

Hearing that, everyone stopped worrying about other issues. Rather, the focus was shifted to the monitoring screen, awaiting the first sight of the three-star system. After waiting for 15 minutes, some flashes of light appeared outside the window. Then, the space outside seemed to have opened up all of a sudden. The complete darkness that shrouded us was slowly penetrated by golden rays of light. As the rays of light entered the ship, we could even feel a trace of warmth.

I quickly walked up to the window and saw that we had moved out of the dark nebula. Far ahead of us, a two-star system could be seen. Due to its distance from us, the stars were as small as beans. Surprisingly, the rays of light from the bean-sized stars were powerful enough to enter and brighten the ship even when the stars were so far away. Numerous questions arose in my mind as I rapidly went through the downloaded knowledge to look for an explanation for what I was experiencing.

"Canyue, we are still over a billion kilometers away from the system. You won't be able to see much even if you stand so close to the window," said Domo from behind me.

I immediately returned to the monitoring screen. At that point, everyone else was already gathered there. The ship's monitoring system worked rapidly. We would receive a status report on the discovered system soon.

"I think I saw a two-star system just now, but we're looking for a three-star system," I said to Dodo.

"We're too far away, and the naked eye won't be able to see well enough. Just wait for the result from our scans. We will be approaching the inner edge of the system in 40 minutes," said Dodo.

A few minutes later, the scan result was out, proving that this was really a three-star system. It would seem like Dodo's and Dondon's calculations had been right. From the images, the two larger stars and the one smaller star had come together to form a three-star system. The smaller star was between the two bigger stars, and the gravitational pull of the two bigger stars had created some sort of balance that resulted in the formation of a three-star system.

Around the system was a clear space that was not part of the dark nebula. Within the clear space, we could detect the traces of several planets. At the outer layer of the pure space were layers of dust clouds. Whirlpools of different sizes and flashes of light could be seen within the dust clouds, and perhaps new planets or even stars were in the process of being born.

"Reporting to the commander and the deputy commander, we have managed to calculate the age of the stars by using the mass calculation method. The two bigger stars have a lifespan of about 4 billion years old while the smaller star has a lifespan of about  30 billion years old," reported Dodo.

"Mass calculation method? How does that work?" asked Baron Sisse.

"Blue's primary star, the sun, is about 4.6 billion years old with a mass of 1.989 × 10^30 kilograms. By comparing the mass of the sun and other stars, the researchers on Blue were able to determine the age of other newly discovered stars," explained Dodo.

"Is that accurate? What if the star was born bigger than your primary star? That is also likely to happen," questioned Principal Sosse.

"Principal, that does not conflict with our calculation, and there is no denying that the scenario you mentioned might happen. The lifespan of a star depends on the rate at which the star exhausts its nuclear fuel and the amount of fuel available. We're talking about the formula used on Blue. In our formula, the mass of our primary star is the unit of measurement we use for other stars. Depending on their mass, certain stars hit their age milestones and grow into different stages after a different number of years. Our formula should work on paper.

"The bigger a star, the shorter the lifespan. For example, Alnilam is more than 30 times the size of our primary star, and its lifespan can perhaps be as short as 10 million years," said Dodo.

Find the original at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

There was not much argument against Dodo's theory. After all, this wasn't our true concern.

"If this little star has a lifespan of 30 billion years, then it will be very odd. How can the dust clouds form a new star in between two mature stars? And how can it maintain such a stable form?" asked Zhang Xingxing.

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"I believe this small star wasn't formed here. Rather, it took form somewhere else," Old Du suddenly said.

"Not formed here? Are you saying that it flew here by itself?" questioned Zhang Bao'er.

"Exactly. I think this small star is a wandering star. Where it was born, the dust clouds had been shifting in accordance with the outside pull. Ultimately, the pull of the two stars dragged it here. By pure coincidence, the three stars formed a balance," said Old Du.

"Wandering star. Generally, due to the mass of each star, an entire star system, a celestial system with higher total mass is required to restrict stars in a certain area. But in the universe, different star systems will often affect each other with their respective gravitational pulls. Ultimately, they will collide and become a new system. In the process, some stars might also be thrown off from their original system, becoming wandering stars," said Dodo.

"In that case, there must be something powerful that had altered the original movement of this star, causing it to depart from its original position and come into this system instead," said Zhang Xingxing.

"Apart from the collision of systems, the great acceleration created from black holes colliding might create wandering stars as well," said Dodo.

"With the size of Horsehead Nebula, it is unlikely for there to be two massive systems in it. In that case, it is more likely that there are two black holes here," I concluded.

"There is actually a black hole in the Horsehead Nebula? No, are there multiple? That is inconceivable. This is a place where stars are born. Even the Horsehead Nebula itself is relatively young. It is estimated to only be around five billion years old. It doesn't make sense that there are two dead black holes in a nebula where new stars are born," said Zhang Bao'er, feeling like everything he had learned was a lie.

"That isn't exactly surprising. Since a wandering star can exist here, these black holes might also be of similar nature: wandering black holes," I said as an idea suddenly struck me.

Wandering black holes wasn't a new concept. On Blue, it had been proven long ago that wandering black holes existed. That would explain the existence of black holes in the Horsehead Nebula.

"But to have two wandering black holes appear here at the same time before colliding, the probability of that happening is way too low," questioned Principal Sosse.

That was a reasonable question. From how young the Horsehead Nebula was, it was way too unlikely for two black holes to wander in at the same time. Everyone sank into silence. Everyone on Blue understood that it was all due to the unique and safe environment that Blue had been able to grow safely for over four billion years. 

Blue was located in the outer region of the Milky Way Galaxy, and its location placed it far from supergiant black holes, supergiant meteoroids, supernovas, and other life-ending disasters. In fact, it was located in a stable location suitable for life to grow.

"Space fortress," I suddenly exclaimed after a long silence.

"Are you saying that the light wall of that space fortress is capable of pulling over a celestial body so big?" asked Baron Sisse in astonishment.

"The spatial whirlpool created by the space fortress releases ripples that are infinitely empowered by repetition, creating an effect similar to the pull of a star system on a wandering star," I explained.

"That isn't right. The space fortress can't be older than 100,000 years. That is nothing in the universe. It is too unbelievable that the fortress can attract two black holes in the span of only 100,000 years. If that's really the case, the fortress's ability to alter the order of nature would be so terrifying that we need to really change our plan and should instead consider destroying the fortress," said Zhang Xingxing.

"Impossible. No matter how powerful that fortress is, with how big the universe is, a period of 100,000 years is far too short to alter the trajectory of a massive celestial body. We must have overlooked something," said Master Crystal. He disagreed with my theory.

"There must be something deeper than this. We can only investigate it further if we want to know more. Dodo, how long will it take for us to reach the three-star system? Perhaps we will get more answers after observing the system from a closer distance. Also, have the nine planets been discovered?" I asked.

"We will be 600 million kilometers from the system in 20 minutes. However, the nine planets have yet to be discovered. But since the empire has quite a lot of invisible planets, we can't draw any conclusion before making a closer observation," said Dodo helplessly. They were somewhat losing their confidence in their analytical ability due to the empire's level of technology.

Hearing that, we stopped the discussion. We could only make further observations upon approaching the system.

"All these people are acting like theorists, but not one of their words can be believed. All of them are merely guessing based on their personal opinions. This is completely unreliable. Attracting a black hole within 100,000 years? It would be more believable if there was a giant wormhole or time tunnel involved and working as a medium," said Domo, assuming a lecturing tone as he spoke to the simple-minded Baobao.

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