"Joe Haldeman - Tricentennial (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

From Fax & Pix, 12 March 1992:

ANTIQUE SPACEPROBE

ZAPPED BY NEW STARS

1. Pioneer 10 sent first Jupiter pix Earthward in 1973 (see pix upleft,
upright).

2. Left solar system 1987. First man-made thing to leave solar system.

,3. Yesterday, reports NSA, Pioneer 10 begins AM to pick up heavy
radiation. Gets more and more to max about 3 PM. Then goes back down.
Radiation has to come from outside solar system.

4. NSA and Hawaii scientists say Pioneer 10 went through disk of
synchrotron (sin kro tron) radiation that comes from two stars we
didn't know about before.

A. The stars are small "black dwarfs."

B. They are going round each other once every 40 seconds, and take
350,000 years to go around the Sun.

C. One of the stars is made of antimatter. This is stuff that blows
up if it touches real matter. What the Hawaii scientists saw was a dim
circle of invisible (infrared) light, that blinks on and off every
twenty seconds. This light comes from where the atmospheres of the two
stars touch (see pic downleft).

D. The stars have a big magnetic field. Radiation comes from stuff
spinning off the stars and trying to get through the field.
E. The stars are about 5000 times as far away from the Sun as we are.
They sit at the wrong angle, compared to the rest of the solar system
(see pic downright).

5. NSA says we aren't in any danger from the stars. They're too far
away, and besides, nothing in the solar system ever goes through the
radiation.

6. The woman who discovered the stars wants to call them Scylla (skill-
a) and Charybdis (ku-rib-dus).

7. Scientists say they don't know where the hell those two stars came
from. Everything else in the solar system makes sense.

February 2075

When the docking phase started, Charlie thought, that was when it was