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| By Cäsium137 (talk) after R. J. Hall after Torsten Bronger |
Distance: 1330 AU from Earth | Content Flag: Public
The transmission we were monitoring from Tau Ceti has ceased and we are concerned as to the cause. This isn’t new behaviour as the original transmissions didn’t resume, not until this new signal appeared, and now this transmission has ceased too. The strange behaviour in these signals adds another layer to the enigma.
Before the signal ended, I was able to translate some more of its meaning and unfortunately it doesn’t bring good news. I’ve concluded that the object approaching Tau Ceti e is another planet, but one not previously known to us. I don’t believe that this planet is part of the Tau Ceti star system as its orbit doesn’t fit what we know about the system.
While we still haven’t unlocked everything from the message, the fact that a planet-sized object has passed near to the origin of both signals is significant. We now believe that the object is a rogue planet and that it moved close enough to Tau Ceti e to cause massive disruption. Rogue planets are bodies from another star system that are somehow ejected and travel through interstellar space.
There’s so much we don’t know, but even a technologically advanced civilisation would struggle to survive such an encounter. Humanity probably couldn’t. A large enough world would cause immense damage even to a larger planet. The tidal stress would cause earthquakes of a cataclysmic nature, and if the planet had oceans then the gravitational pull of the rogue would create massive tsunamis.
Such devastation would probably cause an extinction level event and that is what we now think ended the original transmissions. But we have received signals since, so the devastation wasn’t total as someone or something started the new transmission.
However, now the new signal has also stopped and we don’t know why. All we hear through the multi-frequency receivers is the almost random hiss of the stars around us and that of creation itself from the cosmic background radiation.
I hope we are wrong in our supposition, but at the moment no other theory fits the few facts available. We’ll continue to analyse the data and keep the sensors active to try and put more of the pieces together.
If you have questions for us as we travel through interstellar space then send them to mission control and they will transmit them to us. This is Seb signing off.
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