Alien Singularity

Chapter 3. Proxima b

The fleet consisted of one hundred solar sails, each a team carrying three Von Neumann bots at its center, forming a tiny triangular shape at the heart of the sail, was now outside the solar system into interstellar space.

Each bot was an independent unit, capable of complex decision making of its own. They had a small amount of high efficiency rocket fuel, and three bots onboard of one solar sail worked as a team to adjust the direction of their motion. Although they can communicate with bots on other sails, there was very little they could do to help each other. To conserve energy, all but one guard bot decided to go into hibernation mode during this long journey, and would wake up when they approach the destination.

Two years into their journey, half of the fleet was already lost to interstellar dust particles, most of which were located in the Oort Cloud. Some of them lost their solar sails, but the naked probes were still flying with the fleet. For them, the destiny was unclear. Without solar sail to slow them down at the other end, they will keep going into the infinite space with unknown future.

The fleet was in a relatively safe zone, as the interstellar space was largely clear of any particles, now that the Oort Cloud is behind them. That is, of course, before they enter into a similar region in the Alpha Centauri system.

Another 3 years have past, and the fleet was near Alpha Centauri. After passing their Oort Cloud zone, only 20 sail teams were still remaining, and many of them had holes in their solar sails. They were ready for the final slowing down process.

At 80% of light speed, a direct impact landing would be a certain yet spectacular suicide. To land safely on Proxima b, the fleet must first slow down with the solar sails, using sunlight from the binary stellar system. This would mean that each unit would have to fly close to Alpha Centauri A to get enough light resistance to reduce its speed, but not too close to be sucked in and burn up; and then fly by towards Alpha Centauri B for further slowing down, and then fly by towards the final destination: Proxima Centauri, where it gets its final speed reduction, and then would proceed to go landing on Proxima b.

That process took roughly half a year to accomplish. The bot teams with damaged sails never made it, as they were either sucked into the sun, or got blown out to the interstellar space for lack of precise speed control. At the end, only seven teams with intact solar sails made it to the final planet, orbiting above its atmosphere to scout for a good landing spot.

The planet was tidally locked, with one side perpetually facing its mother star, just like how our Moon orbits the Earth. The difference was, one side always facing the sun remained very hot and the other side perpetually dark and cold. The temperate region was the equatorial belt, where the sun was perpetually slightly above or below the horizon. The horizon was called the terminator line. The planet had adequate surface with liquid water, in the shape of rivers and lakes along the equatorial region, and the land quickly became dry and arid into the hot side, and on the other side, vast amount of frozen ice.

The bots detected a strong magnetic field around the planet, most likely to be generated by a liquid iron core. This was essential to the lives on the planet, as it was very close to its parent star and receives a huge amount of stellar wind from it. Without the magnetic shield to deflect the stellar wind, the planet would not be able to hold on to its atmosphere. Bots also quickly located the polar regions of the magnetic fields, both on opposite sides around the equatorial region, forming a pole line perpendicular to the planet's orbiting plain. The planet's slight eccentric orbiting pattern created the rotation of inner molten iron core, generating this magnetic field.

After circulating above the terminator line for a few days, bots located the largest and deepest water body near the north magnetic polar region for their landing. The bots calculated that by plunging into the deep lake, water would break their hurling speed and gave them a soft landing on the lake floor.

It was the time for final descent. Slowly, one after the other, bot teams descended into Proxima b's atmosphere. As their speed picked up, friction caused their solar sail to heat up. They used this method as their final speed reduction in their descent. But not for long, quickly the heat was so intense and their sails turnt into a fireball in a blink of an eye. After that, it was free fall for them. Teams all disentangle themselves from each other so each bot could fly and maneuver on its own.

Twenty one bots, all shaped like a bullet, pointed their nose downwards, to minimize the impact from the water surface. Surprisingly, the atmosphere was very dense, and successfully slowed down their speed to quite a bit.

On the lake surface, it was eerily quiet . It was one of the calm moments when the wind was not howling, and the sky was clear with no rain or hail, with only a few inset-like organisms occasionally flying up and touching down on the water. Small ripples moved up and down the water surface, reflecting a snow capped mountain on one side and a dry, arid mountain top on the other.

Suddenly, at lightning speeds, those bots whizzed by, and with big splashes, they plunged into the water. Steam and bubbles came out of the ocean surface as those red hot bots hit the water. Under the surface, some bots attempted to turn so the water can tumble them and slow them further, others kept straight trajectory to let the squishy, muddy floor do its trick.

When the dust settled down, all bots were staying still on the ocean floor. Majority of them were broken into pieces, some already sustained heavy damage from the heat, and the impact of cold water instantly disintegrated them; some hit a solid rock on the lake floor and shattered, and a few intact ones lying motionless. None of them were sending signals to each other, and none of them was moving. That was not a good sign. It could mean that all the bots were lost.

After what seems to be an eternal few minutes, one bot, with the name P17/3, started to come back to life. It deployed an airbag, which inflates quickly, and soon it rose to the lake surface. Upon surfacing, it quickly transformed into its working format: with a solar panel deployed like a pair of wings, a panoramic camera as its eyes in the center and an antenna sticking out into the air. It looked like an alien bee, a perfect match for this exoplanet.

As P17/3 gazed into its surroundings in awe, it was mesmerized by the beauty of this world; the Sun was just a little above the horizon, bigger but much dimmer and redder than our Sun back home; the lake was surrounded by mountains, with ice capped ones on the cold side and dry, arid mountain tops on the hot side. Strong air flows blew up snow on the mountain top towards the lake, and on the other side, strong winds blew dust from dry mountain tops further away. It was obvious that the planet had a constant strong air flow, with the hot air rising from the sunlit region, flowing up to stratosphere then into the dark side, dropping down as the air cooled, and flowing near surface towards the hot side to be heated to rise up again, in a perpetual loop. Lush, black vegetation grow all over the sunlit edges of the lake, and well onto the mountain sides up to the ice cap; and on the other side, to just below the dry top.

The entire landscape was basked in a red huge, as the sunlight was predominantly red. And all of a sudden, the entire sky was lit up with a burst of bright green light. P17/3 looked up, What a spectacular view! An immense aurora just appeared above its head, ten times stronger than the aurora on Earth, as the planet's magnetic field trapped an incoming strong solar wind.

"Enough sightseeing", said P17/3 to itself. "Time to get to work". It moved quickly to the shore, conducted a quick environment analysis, and beamed a brief report to its home: the Earth.