The first signs of life

The discovery was made by a team of astrological students on a remote Scottish island, a summer long project, the remoteness of the island meaning an absence of artificial light that allowed unpolluted access to the sky, fifty miles from civilisation, and that’s only if you count the rest of Scotland as civilised.

 

The team were looking at one small area of sky in detail, and happened to get lucky. In total there were 47 stars in the area they were looking at, none of them visible to the naked eye and all of them ripe for the astronomical plucking.

 

It took them less than a week to discover the planet, and for the rest of the summer they studied it in detail, and, with the initial results already startling, they were able to borrow access to the telescope at the Royal Edinburgh observatory for twenty minutes a night, every Tuesday and Thursday between 3.40 and 4.00 a.m. until they felt confident enough to publish a paper.

 

What they found was simply astonishing, well worth the unsocial hours and midge-inflicted dampness of a Scottish summer. Evidence of oxygen and nitrogen in the planet’s atmosphere, the fingerprint of life itself, as the gas combination can only occur where there are lifeforms to produce it. They had discovered alien life.  

 

Their paper took over a year to be published, as it was held up to the highest level of scrutiny possible. One of the major astronomical centres in the UK was asked to review the paper and they carried out their own study, using a more high-powered telescope for extended periods of time. They consequently produced their own paper, which was published in another, more prestigious journal on the same day as the original paper.  

 

The day the two academic journals hit the newsstands was a day of turmoil. The students were interviewed back to back by TV and radio companies from around the globe, often by journalists with little grasp of English, surreal conversations in which the students answered the questions they assumed they were ask. It was the biggest story since man landed on the moon, probably bigger, proof finally that we were not alone in the universe. That if there was a god, he was a more fertile god than previously assumed.

 

The planet was christened Goldilocks, though the origins of the name are disputed. Some credit the attractive, blonde student from the group, who was the most photogenic and consequently the most frequently interviewed. There was also a story that the students had lived on porridge for breakfast every morning of their Scottish retreat, or some say it was simply named after the theory – the planet was found by searching the Goldilocks zone around a star. Maybe it was a combination of the three.

 

For five days the world media was crammed with aliens; back to back coverage, websites full of theological debates, jokes, conspiracy theories and scaremongering. There was no other news. Wars, political squabbles, celebrity affairs, these were tiny, insignificant, domestic affairs that couldn’t compete with the bigger story.

 

And then Goldilocks went dark. Not quite dark, in fact, Goldilocks became a bright fiery ball, an explosion of all the colours in the ‘Richard Of’ end of the spectrum of light. Godilocks was now a redhead.

 

And slowly, with all the world’s telescope’s now watching it, the red mist faded, the fire faded, and when the planet became fully visible again it was a husk. All trace of life had gone. The atmosphere, which had given away the clue to life, had been eaten away, burnt up, engulfed in flame.

 

Speculation was rife about what had happened, and the implications for the human race. Was this a common phenomenon, a universal threat facing all life-supporting planets. Was it the result of war? Nuclear Armageddon, or even something worse, some dastardly science of death we haven’t invented yet? Or was it, as some religious fanatics argued, simply the wrath of God, for had the bible not told us that we were his chosen people, that we should be alone in the universe? Though quite why, if this were the case, their all-seeing all-knowing God was so reliant on a bunch of Scottish students for the tip-off they failed to specify.

 

And then a Swiss academic made a breakthrough. He had recognised the descriptions of Goldilocks in its current form. One of the 715 planets discovered by Kepler mission in their search had a very similar appearance. It was more distant than Goldilocks, and whatever fires had besieged the planet had long been spent, but the consequent structure of the planet’s atmosphere was almost identical. The mystery of the planet’s unusual makeup had passed unnoticed at the time, ironically because of the astronomical obsession with finding signs of life, and it was clearly uninhabitable.

 

What did the finding mean? Had this planet also once bore life? If so it meant that the only two planets humankind had ever found with life, had both met the same inexplicable end.

 

It did not bode well for humanity, not to mention the rest of the Earth’s species. In religious circles there was already talk of the need to build a space arc, so that two of every animal and plant could be rescued should the Earth meet a similar fate. Though quite where such an arc would go was unspecified.

 

Following the Swiss discovery the hunt for planets in a similar post-fiery-ball state became the focus of all astronomical attention. And surprisingly, given the total absence of planets with any trace of life, in next to no time more than a dozen planets were found matching Goldilocks in her current state.

 

And then a Chinese astronomer, Xia Hu, made a startling connection. The planets formed a line.

 

More or less.

 

Not a straight line, it veered off a direct course by several thousand light years, which in any other context would not be considered a line at all, not even the most optimistic cricketer, for example, would appeal for an LBW if the line of the ball was missing the stumps by 40 light years, and very few umpires would give the decision in the bowler’s favour.

 

But there was possible to trace a connection all the same. All the planets fell within the same area of space and there was a pattern, the most distant planet was 150,000 light years, with Goldilocks a relative neighbour, just 120 light years away.

All the planets had been, to use Xia’s expression, ‘huskified’, burnt to a cinder in the same manner, though there were subtle differences in the temperature and structure of the planets which suggested that those nearest to us had been ‘huskified’ more recently.

 

It was as if … and Xia never put it as crudely as this in his paper, which was carefully worded, carefully evidenced and much respected amongst the astronomical profession … but it was as if something was travelling across the universe and engulfing planets in a fiery ball.

 

All eyes turned to the other side of the line. The post-Goldilocks journey.

 

It took a year to find. An American observatory made the discovery, just over one light year away from Goldilocks. A vast metallic, carbon-dioxide-spewing mass in the sky, unburdened by any star or planet, and travelling at something approaching the speed of light.

 

It was the destructor fleet, for there was no doubting what it was, for no physics can explain the random location of a life-bearing metallic mass of that scale, and as for their intentions, they had left their calling card too many times for those to be in doubt.

 

And it was travelling along the Xia Hu line. The Xia Hu line that traced back to the first planetary wreck some 150,000 light years away, and then stretched, past Goldilocks, all the way to Earth and beyond.

 

It was just 119 years away.