48: Chapter 48 The Importance of the Sun

[Alien Whistleblower: I am NASA astrophysicist Daniel, since Chen Mu mentioned "thirty minutes next time, and three days the time after," I believe it is my responsibility to tell everyone what this means from a scientific perspective.]

[Let's start with three minutes. Three minutes is really not a big problem. The thermal inertia of the Earth's system is immense; the heat stored by the atmosphere and oceans will not dissipate within three minutes. Surface temperatures will not experience any perceptible change. Crops will not freeze to death in three minutes.]

[Three minutes is equivalent to a slightly longer total solar eclipse. This happens somewhere in nature every eighteen months. Humans have seen it countless times; three minutes in itself is not dangerous.]

[But thirty minutes, that is a different order of magnitude.]

[A thirty-minute interruption of solar radiation causes the surface to begin losing net heat. Atmospheric circulation will show local disturbances. But even more fatal is the power grid; photovoltaic power generation in the Western Hemisphere will drop to zero within thirty minutes, and the frequency regulation pressure on the grid will far exceed any design redundancy. Large-scale power outages are almost inevitable.]

[Thirty minutes is barely within the tolerance of human society, but the economic cost will be astronomical.]

[Three days without the sun, and surface temperatures will begin to drop significantly. Not the kind of "getting colder" drop, but a decline in the global average temperature by one to two degrees Celsius per day.]

[Does that sound like not much? No. At the peak of the Ice Age, the global average temperature was about six degrees Celsius lower than it is now. At that time, the world was covered by a three-kilometer-thick ice sheet, and sea levels were one hundred twenty meters lower than they are today. In just three days, the Earth will begin to slide in that direction.]

[But the drop in temperature is not the most fatal part.]

[The most fatal part is the cessation of photosynthesis. Three days without light, and all plants, from the trees in the Amazon rainforest to the phytoplankton in the Pacific Ocean, will completely stop producing oxygen.]

[At the same time, dead plants will begin to decompose, consuming oxygen. After three days, when the sun returns, the plants will not recover immediately. Some will have died. Some will have entered the wrong seasonal rhythm. The wheat you planted will think winter has arrived, and then fail to produce ears when it is supposed to mature a month later.]

[Three days of the sun disappearing is not enough to cause a total crop failure for the whole year. But the buffer margin of global food reserves is far smaller than you imagine.]

[Global wheat stocks are enough to feed all of humanity for about three months. If a three-day solar eclipse affects one growing season, even a reduction in production of just ten to twenty percent will cause famine to begin in those countries without food reserves.]

[First Yemen. Then South Sudan. Then Ethiopia. And then, while you are still staring at the rising price of bread on the supermarket shelf, some places at the other end of the chain will already be eating tree bark.]

[I won't even describe three weeks. A three-week global solar eclipse is equivalent to a medium-scale extinction event. Humanity might not go extinct, but human civilization—the one you know with supermarkets, hospitals, and the internet—will certainly be gone.]

[As for three months, I think all eight billion people on Earth, except for that top tier of people living in bunkers, will certainly no longer exist.]

[And the most critical point: the number three minutes itself is also conveying information; their estimation of time is extremely precise.]

[Tomorrow at nine o'clock, the sun will return after three minutes.]

[But remember: these three minutes are not about what he is doing to us. It is about him allowing us to see exactly how far he can go.]

[After three minutes past nine tomorrow, I will continue my analysis.]

[Before then, please prepare candles—not because you need candles for three minutes. It is because you need to remember that every time you light a candle from now on, it will be a countdown.]

Inside the United Nations Building, when Maya pushed open the door, Chen Mu was sitting on a chair by the window, as if waiting for something.

She walked in carrying a tray. On the plate were two flatbreads, their crusts seared golden brown, edges slightly puffed, with steam rising from the folds.

She placed the tray on the table and asked anxiously, "Is the Twitter post you just made real? Did your Commander give the order?"

Chen Mu looked up, seeing her brows knitted together and her eyes a bit red.

"That's right. They formulated this threat plan with the intention of forcing your Blue Star to surrender."

"It is still authorized by the Commander and executed by the mothership; I am only responsible for conveying it."

Maya was silent for a moment, her hand unconsciously gripping the edge of a rag: "Then what about you? If Blue Star really surrenders, will you be taken back to the home planet for trial?"

Chen Mu shook his head: "No."

"However," he continued, "the Emperor might send someone else to Blue Star to supervise me on-site."

"Someone else?"

"Probably someone from the staff, like the Commander's deputy or the Emperor's inspector."

Chen Mu sighed: "By then, I will still be the Guga Planet Ambassador to Blue Star, but there will be one more person by my side watching me. He will have the right to question my every decision. He can listen in on every one of my communications."

Hearing this, Maya subconsciously breathed a sigh of relief. Realizing this, she immediately lowered her head, folded the rag over and over, then turned and walked to the table to start setting the plates.

The aroma of the flatbread wafted over. Chen Mu stood up, walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

"Alright." He finished his first bite, picked up the water glass beside him, and took a sip. "There are many things right now that neither of us can do anything about."

"Whether it's the Commander or the Emperor, you can't change the decisions they make, and neither can I. Let's just wait and see."

He set his fork on the edge of the plate and picked up his phone: "Rather than worrying about the sun at nine o'clock tomorrow, I'd actually like to see what that Sima Bei has to say."

Chen Mu had already opened the video app. The algorithm did not let him down; the first item on the homepage was Sima Bei's face, prominently appearing in the recommendation column. The title on the cover was in bold yellow text for an emergency update: "Chen Mu Releases Another Smoke Bomb: Is the Sun Gone at Nine Tomorrow? Sima Bei Debunks the Rumor Overnight."

The view count had already exceeded eight million and was rising at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The live stream cover was still that familiar face. Sima Bei snapped open his folding fan. The four characters on the face of the fan had changed to: "All is fair in war."

The barrage of comments exploded.

[He's here, he's here! Teacher Sima is here to save the day overnight!]

[Teacher Sima, hurry and say this is fake!]

[Beacon of Humanity, Sima Bei]

"Everyone, I didn't intend to go live tonight. It's not that I was afraid, but I was really sleepy. But when my assistant sent me this new tweet from Chen Mu, I scrambled up—not because I was scared, but because I was angry."

He raised his voice, tapping the table with his folding fan with a thudding sound: "Everyone, do you know what public opinion warfare is? This is a standard public opinion war!"

Sima Bei glared: "I've spent my life studying military psychological warfare, and I've never seen such crude work! We aren't drinking tea today; let's serve the main course!"