The Juno Continuum

"The Juno Continuum" is included as prelude No. 5 in *The Juno Contingency (novel)* and is set in the Juno universe.

## Teaser

The second sun, Juno, now threatens to implode into a singularity, producing a new, seemingly insurmountable threat to the planet.

## Continuity

This is a sequel to The Juno Conjunction.

## Plot

### Prologue

Seven Solar years after Ignition, Earth has completed its sunshade, which it uses to regulate the climate. When Juno is in astronomical opposition, the shade is increased to maximum to block out all light from Sol; then as Juno recedes to conjunction, the shade is gradually dispersed to allow Solar light in. With Earth effectively now lit by Juno, the world uses a new Junoan calendar that follows the star's 398.88-day year.

At a congressional hearing, Dr. Leslie Angiers advocates for a new space mission to Juno to attempt to make contact with the aliens after the disastrous Peace mission a decade ago. She points to how the "Junoans" have consumed all of Juno's moons to build 18 planet-sized tiles floating around the star, so they are clearly not finished meddling with the solar system. The government argues that the aliens are best left undisturbed.

### 1. The Juno Singularity

Months later Leslie is visited at home by Ret, now so rich that he commands 10% of all the world's wealth and is escorted everywhere by a double detail of Secret Service since he is such a valuable national asset. Leslie asks why he didn't summon her to his estate, but Ret says this is for old times' sake. He shows her top secret data of a star 4 light–years away that has disappeared. Scientists suspect the Junoans have collapsed it into a black hole. Comparing emission spectra and accounting for light-delay, if Juno follows a similar timeline it is likely to become a singularity itself within three years.

Ret says this would produce an intense gamma ray burst that would ravage life on Earth, and he asks how they can prevent such a catastrophe. Leslie suggests that, since most of the planet's surface is water, they could just get lucky and that the gamma ray burst would hit the Pacific Ocean, which would wipe out half the planet's ozone but still only kill a small percentage of the population. Ret says his own analysts have already given him this "use-the-Earth-as-a-dartboard plan" and that he needs Leslie to come up with something better. She agrees to lead efforts to develop the government's response.

Leslie assembles a team to produce a white paper titled "The Juno Singularity." They quickly realize that there is no way to avert or even mitigate such a catastrophe from Earth. Since Juno is always traveling around the planet, they would have to build a massive lead shield ringing the Earth in space in order to protect them from an unpredictable gamma ray event. Meanwhile there are not even any stable gravitational points to anchor such a shield to as they did with the sunshade at L1.

Instead the team realizes that the only solution is to travel to Juno. The mission will need to carry advanced sensors so as to calculate an accurate timeline for Juno's implosion, to enable the Earth to better prepare. They will also need new methods for making contact and communicating with the Junoans. And they will need multiple craft for redundancy should the Junoans attack (given the previous experience they had with the Peace mission).

Ret champions Leslie's results and world governments approve a plan to outfit the current space fleet for an emergency excursion to Juno. This includes three fully laden SpaceX Starships plus multiple smaller capsules and landers, with a total mission mass of hundreds of tons. To sufficiently shorten the travel time to Juno, the ships will have to use long departure burns plus assistance from the Chinese orbital EM catapult.

### 2. To Valinor

The new space mission, dubbed Contact, is prepared on a crash timeline. To reduce the launch risk, the Starship fleet is lofted into orbit empty, refueled in a parking orbit, and then supplies are sent up by multiple smaller rockets once ready. The mission will require a crew of sixty, which taps out most of the world's active and reserve astronaut cores. They undergo rigorous training at NASA and CNSA facilities.

New readings are continually coming in from Juno, all of which keep pushing the implosion window forward. Another neighboring star is even observed to disappear, increasing the mission's urgency.

Leslie argues for launching an advance probe to get them more accurate on-site readings of Juno. Because the current gravitational positions of Earth and Juno are so disadvantageous, however, the probe will need to expend all its fuel on the way out just to arrive within a year. With no fuel left to slow down, the probe will only be able to execute a brief flyby of Juno and send back a few days' worth of data. The mission will cost $50 billion alone, but Ret okays it as a necessary risk reduction. Leslie oversees its final outfitting and launch.

As the departure date for the Contact mission nears, Ret approaches Leslie and suggests she go along on the mission. Leslie is incredulous since she has no space experience; but Ret explains that, once the mission reaches Juno, it's going to be a light–hour away from Earth, with no possibility of real-time communication. The Contact mission will essentially be a world unto itself, and Ret needs someone out there he trusts to help call the shots. Leslie continues resisting, but Ret ultimately convinces her by saying, "I think it's time for Frodo ... to head to Valinor."

Leslie is made a late addition to the astronaut crew and undergoes only a week of training. She is launched on a Dragon spacecraft and docks with the last pallet of supplies sent up to the Starships. One by one the ships are mated to the Chinese EM catapult and accelerated out to Juno, then fire their engines to reduce the travel time to only fifteen months.

### 3. The Juno Contact

A year into the Contact mission, the advance probe successfully conducts a flyby and transmits its findings back. The data is enough to announce the discovery of novel strong force interactions between the Junoan tiles and the star. The data produces the first accurate estimate for implosion, to within only a few days, which shows that the window for action will be critically short once the mission arrives.

Entering the Juno system, the Contact mission starts broadcasting to the Junoans but receives no response. They take up staggered orbits around the star, with Leslie in the "reserve" Starship that remains out in the farthest orbit, while the "action" Starship moves closest. The action Starship dispatches its landers, which set down on and explore the Junoan tiles. The astronauts get some interesting readings but are unable to dent or even scratch the tiles' material, and they find no features or entry points.

Leslie observes that the Junoans have consumed most of Juno's moons, leaving only small remnants and debris fields. She takes a capsule mission out to explore the remains of Io and collects samples from its exposed core. The readings from the samples allow them to approximate parameters for the exotic forces the Junoans are generating. Using the data, Earth transmits back a model that confirms Juno will implode into a singularity in only 18 days.

The mission continues attempts to contact the Junoans with radio waves, lasers, and even visual signaling, but all efforts fail. They send an unmanned capsule to fly into one of the strong force outlets on a tile and it is destroyed while provoking no response. The day after the collision, however, Earth transmits an updated model that shows the implosion is now a few hours closer.

### 4. The Singularity Equations

Leslie urgently calls a mission council, as she declares that they've inadvertently discovered the solution to the problem. The Singularity Equations model that Earth sent depends exponentially on Juno's input mass and energy; so even small amounts of extra mass fed into Juno now via the strong force tiles will materially affect the implosion time. This is what happened when their capsule was fed in: by increasing Juno's current mass, it moved the exponential implosion a little nearer. The mission commander questions what use this could be, and Leslie stipulates that, if they can't stop Juno's implosion, their only option is to accelerate it.

They bring up a model of the solar system showing that Earth will be in astronomical conjunction with Juno in 10.6 days. During conjunction, there will be a 15-hour window where Earth is hidden from Juno behind the Sun. If the implosion occurs in that window, all the gamma rays will be absorbed by the Sun, thus protecting the Earth. The crew guffaws at this feat of interplanetary "threading the needle," which aims to hit a target arcseconds wide from across light–hours of space. Nonetheless, with time running short and no better proposals, the commander okays the plan. Leslie conveys the news back to Earth.

The crew calculates they will need to add significant amounts of mass to Juno to accelerate implosion sufficiently. They evacuate one of their Starships, load it up with spare cargo, and crash it into a tile. After taking more readings, the crew finds this new mass has hastened the implosion by 5.1 days. The crew evacuates another Starship and crashes the second one, but this time implosion is only hastened by 3.2 days. Leslie remarks that, because of the exponential buildup, there's an effect where, the longer they wait to try anything, the less cumulative effect it will have.

On Earth, Ret follows the mission's attempts to hasten the implosion. When he sees they're coming up short, he forms an emergency council to see if there is any way Earth can help. One scientist suggests fully deploying the Sol sunshade, as it would reflect the Sun's light back to Juno. Because of mass–energy tradeoff, even the addition of a little extra light will also serve to speed Juno's implosion. The problem is, with Juno nearing conjunction, the sunshade is normally fully stowed, so deploying it would plunge the Earth into total darkness.

Ret takes a chance and makes an emergency address at the UN, announcing his plan to fully deploy the sunshade. Other world leaders decry this, as the sunshade is supposed to be governed supranationally, but Ret insists there's no time. He announces the sunshade will deploy in one hour and remain so for a week until the implosion has passed. He notes that, in the worst-case scenario, the sunshade would also help absorb part of the gamma ray burst.

*Read the conclusion "5. Juno and Beyond the Infinite" on Amazon,*