But now, Ye made the first step in confirming her guess about the gain reflectivity of solar energy mirrors: The energy mirrors not only reflected radiation coming from the lower-frequency side, but amplified it. All the mysterious sudden fluctuations within narrow frequency bands that she had observed were in fact the result of other radiation coming from space being amplified after reflecting off an energy mirror in the sun. That was why there were no observable disturbances on the surface of the sun.
This time, after the Jovian radio outbursts reached the sun, they were re-emitted, as if by a mirror, after being amplified about a hundred million times. The Earth received both sets of emissions, before and after the amplification, separated by sixteen minutes and forty-two seconds.
The sun was an amplifier for radio waves.
However, there was a question: The sun must be receiving electromagnetic radiation from space every second, including radio waves emitted by the Earth. Why were only some of the waves amplified? The answer was simple: In addition to the selectivity of the energy mirrors for frequencies they would reflect, the main reason was the shielding effect of the solar convection zone. The endlessly boiling convection zone situated outside the radiation zone was the outermost liquid layer of the sun. The radio waves coming from space must first penetrate the convection zone to reach the energy mirrors in the radiation zone, where they would be amplified and reflected back out. This meant that in order to reach the energy mirrors, the waves would have to be more powerful than a threshold value. The vast majority of Earth-based radio sources could not cross this threshold, but the Jovian radio outburst did—
And Red Coast’s maximum transmission power also exceeded the threshold.
The problem with solar outages was not resolved, but another exciting possibility presented itself: Humans could use the sun as a superantenna, and, through it, broadcast radio waves to the universe. The radio waves would be sent with the power of the sun, hundreds of millions of times greater than the total usable transmission power on Earth.
Earth civilization had a way to transmit at the level of a Kardashev Type II civilization.
The next step was to compare the waveforms of the two Jovian radio outbursts with the waveforms of the solar outages received by Red Coast. If they matched, then her guess would receive further confirmation.
Ye made her request to the base leadership to contact Harry Peterson and obtain the waveform records of the two Jovian radio outbursts. This was not easy. It was difficult to find the right communication channels, and numerous bureaucracies required layers of formal paperwork. Any error could lead to her being suspected of acting as a foreign spy. So Ye had to wait.
But there was a more direct way to prove the hypothesis: Red Coast itself could transmit radio waves directly at the sun at a power level exceeding the threshold value.
Ye again made her request to the base leadership. But she didn’t dare to give her real reason—it was too fantastic, and she would have been turned down for certain. Instead, she explained that she wanted to do an experiment for her solar research: The Red Coast transmission system would be used as a solar exploration radar whose echoes could be analyzed to obtain some information about solar radiation. Lei and Yang both had deep technical backgrounds, and wouldn’t have been easily fooled, but the experiment described by Ye did have real precedents in Western solar research. In fact, her suggestion was technically easier than the radar exploration of terrestrial planets already being conducted.
“Ye Wenjie, you’re getting out of line,” said Commissar Lei. “Your research should be focused on theory. Do we really need to go to so much trouble?”
Ye begged, “Commissar, it’s possible that a big discovery will be made. Experiments are absolutely necessary. I just want to try it once, please?”
Chief Yang said, “Commissar Lei, maybe we should try once. It doesn’t seem to be too difficult operationally. Receiving the echoes after transmission would take—”
“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Lei said.
“Then Red Coast has just enough time to switch from transmission mode to monitoring mode.”
Lei shook his head again. “I know that it’s technically and operationally feasible. But you… eh, Chief Yang, you just lack the sensitivity for this kind of thing. You want to aim a superpowerful radio beam at the red sun. Have you thought about the political symbolism of such an experiment?”[32]
Yang and Ye were both utterly stunned, but they did not think Lei’s objection ridiculous. Just the opposite: They were horrified that they themselves had not thought of it. During those years, finding political symbolism in everything had reached absurd levels. The research reports Ye turned in had to be carefully reviewed by Lei so that even technical terms related to the sun could be repeatedly revised to remove political risk. Terms like “sunspots” were forbidden.[33] An experiment that sent a powerful radio transmission at the sun could of course be interpreted in a thousand positive ways, but a single negative interpretation would be enough to bring political disaster on everyone. Lei’s reason for refusing to allow the experiment was truly unassailable.
Ye didn’t give up, though. In fact, as long as she didn’t take excessive risk, it wasn’t difficult to accomplish her goal. The Red Coast transmitter was ultra-high-powered, but all of its components were domestically produced during the Cultural Revolution. As the quality of the components was not up to par, the fault rate was very high. After every fifteenth transmission, the entire system had to be overhauled, and after each overhaul, there would be a test transmission. Few people attended these tests, and the targets and other parameters were arbitrarily selected.
One time when she was on duty, Ye was assigned to work during one of the test transmissions after an overhaul. Because a test transmission omitted many operational steps, only Ye and five others were present. Three of them were low-level operators who knew little about the principles behind the equipment. The remaining two were a technician and an engineer, both exhausted and not paying much attention after two days of overhaul work. Ye first adjusted the test transmission power to exceed the threshold value for her gain-reflective solar energy mirror theory, using the maximum power of the Red Coast transmission system. Then she set the frequency to the value most likely to be amplified by the energy mirror. And under the guise of testing the antenna’s mechanical components, she aimed it at the setting sun in the west. The content of the transmission remained the same as usual.
This was a clear afternoon in the autumn of 1971. Afterwards, Ye recalled the event many times but couldn’t remember any special feelings except anxiety, a desire for the transmission to be completed quickly. First, she was afraid to be discovered by her colleagues. Even though she had thought of some excuses, it was still unusual to use maximum power for a test transmission, because doing so would wear down the components. In addition, the Red Coast transmission system’s positioning equipment was never designed to be aimed at the sun. Ye could feel the eyepiece growing hot. If it burnt out she would be in real trouble.
As the sun set slowly in the west, Ye had to manually track it. The Red Coast antenna seemed like a giant sunflower at that moment, slowly turning to follow the descending sun. By the time the red light indicating transmission completion lit up, she was already soaked in sweat.
She glanced around. The three operators at the control panel were shutting down the equipment piece by piece in accordance with the instructions in the operating manual. The engineer was drinking a glass of water in a corner of the control room, and the technician was asleep in his chair. No matter how historians and writers later tried to portray the scene, the reality at the time was completely prosaic.
32
33
) literally means “solar black spots.” Black, of course, was the color of counter-revolutionaries.