278: Chapter 278: The news shocked NASA

11:00 AM. Kyoto, at a hotel.

Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, hitting Robert's face. He was staring at the ceiling, dazed.

He had barely slept last night. After returning from Qingfeng Temple, he watched the recording twice more, spent two hours going through materials, and didn't drift off until 4:00 AM.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated.

He picked it up and took a look; it was an update notification from arXiv.

There were actually two!

He tapped on them, then sat up, rubbed his eyes, and stood barefoot on the carpet, staring motionless for a full twenty-five minutes.

"Holy shit!"

After reading, he collapsed onto the bed.

He recalled what the young man had said at Qingfeng Temple last night: the Moon might have come from Venus, the far side of the Moon had Venus's fingerprints, and the Moon had once danced in the sky.

At the time, he thought it was a crazy flight of fancy.

But now, two papers were laid out before him.

The National Research Institute and Huaqing University—two groups of people had run computers all night, turning those wild thoughts into data and simulation animations.

Robert stared at the 74% on the screen, hesitated for a long time, and finally made a call.

He found a number he hadn't contacted in a long time, labeled: Johnson Mitchell, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The phone rang three times before being answered.

"Robert?" A voice filled with slight surprise came from the other end. "Old friend, what made you think of calling me?"

Robert took a deep breath. "Johnson, I'm sending you two papers. They were just published this morning."

"From China?"

"Yes. You'll know what to do once you've read them."

He hung up the phone and sent the links to the two papers.

He then stood up, walked to the window, and looked at the unfamiliar city outside.

"It is clearly a scientifically barren China, so why has it been constantly emerging on the international stage for the past month or so, even showing signs of replacing the scientific powerhouse that is our country?"

...

12:30 PM.

USA, Washington D.C.

It was 11:30 PM there. Inside the Planetary Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the lights were still on.

Johnson Mitchell had just finished a video conference. On his phone were the links to the two papers.

He curiously tapped on the first one.

Ten minutes later, he lit a cigarette.

Twenty minutes later, he lit his fourth cigarette.

Thirty minutes later, the pack was empty, and the room was filled with smoke.

Then...

He picked up the phone and dialed an internal line. "Notify everyone in the Planetary Science Division. We're having a meeting in the small conference room in fifteen minutes."

...

USA time, 12:00 AM.

NASA Goddard, inside the small conference room.

A dozen people sat around the conference table. The projection screen displayed the English translations of the two papers.

Johnson stood in front of the projection, his expression serious.

"These two papers are from China; one was published by the National Astronomical Observatory, and one by Huaqing University. They were published between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM today, in China time."

"What you are seeing now are the abstracts and core data that I had the translation department translate urgently."

"The full text is still being processed, but the core conclusions are already clear."

He pressed the laser pointer, and the first set of data appeared on the big screen.

"The first paper is from the National Astronomical Observatory. They simulated the missing planet between Mars and Jupiter—they call it tiamat—and the evolutionary path of its fragments after it shattered. The conclusion is: a fragment of appropriate mass, after complex orbital evolution, eventually became the Moon. The simulation probability is 74%."

As he finished speaking, a flurry of whispers broke out in the conference room.

A middle-aged researcher with glasses raised his hand. "Director, what is tiamat? We don't have that designation in our database."

"It's the hypothetical planet mentioned in their previous paper." Johnson pulled up a screenshot of the Solar System. "It was located at 2.8 AU, with a mass of about 0.78 to 0.8 times that of Earth; they deduced its existence using orbital mechanics and spectral data in a previous paper."

The middle-aged researcher looked puzzled. "Did that planet really exist?"

"According to their simulation, yes." Johnson said solemnly. "And this planet shattered 2.8 billion years ago, with the fragments forming today's Asteroid Belt and the initial Moon."

The room gasped, and everyone looked at each other, feeling that this idea was a bit crazy!

A female researcher spoke up: "So they mean the Moon is a fragment of that planet?"

"Yes." Johnson pressed the laser pointer, switching to the second paper.

"The second paper is from the Physics Department of Huaqing University; they simulated the binary star phase of the Moon before it was captured by Earth—assuming the Moon was first captured by Venus, then locked by both Venus and Earth for 800 years, before finally being captured by Earth alone."

"They ran a feasible orbit, with the condition that Earth and Venus were 18 million kilometers apart at the time, the Moon's initial velocity was 13.7 km/s, and the incident angle was 26.5 degrees, just passing through the L1 Lagrange point."

The female researcher frowned. "Such precise conditions?"

"Yes, extremely harsh. But they ran it."

An older male researcher asked, "Director Johnson, do you want us to verify these two papers?"

"Yes. Robert is an old friend of mine, and he called me specifically to have me look at them; knowing him, he wouldn't do this for no reason."

"Furthermore, there is a common name in the author column of both papers—J."

The older researcher suddenly sat up straight. "J? The madman who wrote the papers about the Sun being a black hole, the infinite cycle of the universe, and the 36-degree Sun—is it that J?"

"Yes. And the paper about tiamat mentioned by the Chinese institute last time, he was the first author of that too."

The conference room fell silent again.

After a long while, the middle-aged researcher with glasses spoke again.

"Johnson, I think this is a waste of time. The Chinese love to create big news like this—what tiamat, what binary star system, what Moon from Venus—this is clearly treating mythology as science."

His tone was full of disdain.

"I read their abstracts; they actually cite global mythological records and rock art evidence."

"Is this what an academic paper should contain?"

Another younger researcher chimed in, "I also think it's too hasty. Using mythology as evidence—this isn't science, it's theology."

The female researcher who spoke earlier shook her head. "But they used a large amount of observational data, the terrain of the far side of the Moon and the orientation of the rocks, as well as the hydraulic damping from our NASA moonquake experiments last century; these are all real, not mythology."

"That doesn't prove anything." The middle-aged researcher countered. "Those data can have many interpretations; they just picked the most bizarre, eye-catching one. That's all. Either way, I don't agree!"

"Enough." Johnson raised his hand to stop the argument. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the room.

"I brought you here not to argue about who is right or wrong. But to replicate their simulations."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm serious. Robert sent me these two papers precisely because he wanted us to verify them."

"If their simulation doesn't work, then it's fake. If it does work, then it means the textbooks we've been using for decades might really need to be rewritten!"

He turned around, facing everyone with a stern expression.

"The data is on arXiv, and the simulation parameters are public; I need you to split into groups immediately. One group to replicate the National Research Institute's tiamat evolutionary path, and one group to replicate Huaqing University's binary star phase."

"I want to see the results before dawn."