I ran into a setback with this animation: The models for the insectoid mooner guards would not import properly into the animation software, so I had to use them as static props instead of characters I could animate. So, how could I do an animation with lots of characters getting shot, and hide how stiff they are? The answer is explosions. The answer is ALWAYS explosions with me! So, I dialed up the pyrotechnics to Jeremy Bruckheimer levels, and with some fast cut editing you can barely tell!
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Believe it or not, there's only four pages left! A lot can happen in four pages. Something miraculous could happen and prevent these good people from having their faces melted off. Or it could be four pages of melting faces. You never know; life is like a box of chocolates – you never know if there's raw organ meat on the inside until you take a bite!
Speaking of bites, if you're wondering what's going on in that last panel, it's a continuation of the sordid goings on at Governor Shelley's estate, last glimpsed on page 224. Nothing terribly important there if you missed it; just comic relief and a gratuitous celebrity cameo.
If you're a regular reader of this comic, then it's safe to assume you're familiar with comet 1I/'Oumuamua, the first confirmed interstellar object spotted passing through our solar system. For anyone not familiar with it, it's a large cigar shaped thing, about 400 meters long (1,300 feet), that was spotted entering the inner solar system at high speed back in October of 2017. Since then, it has hooked around the sun and is now on its way out of the solar system, moving too fast for us to catch it with current conventional rockets. Based on its speed and trajectory, astronomers determined that the object came from outside of our solar system. That, along with its bizarre spaceship-like shape, led many to presume it might be an alien spacecraft, eerily similar to the one which visited us in Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous With Rama.'
A recent Harvard study has thrown fuel onto that fire by proposing that the object may very well have been an alien probe, possibly a light sail. This is based on the fact that when it got close to the sun, it suddenly accelerated in a way you would not expect from gravity alone, suggesting it has some additional propulsion method, possibly not natural. This study has received coverage from many reputable news sources, including CNN. However, while you can never rule anything out completely, I don't think it's very likely.
The most alarming aspect of 'Oumuamua is its odd shape. We've never seen anything naturally occurring in our solar system with such an elongated shape. It bears a striking resemblance to an O'Neill cylinder, a type of space habitat that spins to generate artificial gravity, arguably an ideal shape for an interstellar generational ark ship. It's a familiar shape popular in hard sci fi, from Arthur C. Clarke's Rama, to Babylon 5, to the Nova Dagon colony in this comic. Unfortunately, that loose immediate resemblance is about as far as the similarities go. Unlike 'Oumuamua, O'Neil cylinders are designed to spin radially around their central axis, like a washing machine on its spin cycle.
'Oumuamua, on the other hand, tumbles end over end, like it's cartwheeling through space.
Now, this alone does not disqualify it as a possible spaceship. There are realistic spacecraft designs which are designed to tumble end over end exactly like this – what's called a “tumbling pigeon” spacecraft – however, 'Oumuamua is a poor candidate for this. First off, I ran its numbers through SpinCalc to estimate just how much artificial gravity it generates at its tips, and it's an imperceptible 0.00000178 g. It's just not tumbling fast enough to generate any artificial gravity worth mentioning.
As for the anomalous acceleration, there are lots of theories, none of them perfect. It could be any of a number of different effects caused by radiation pressure from the sun, uneven heating due to the tumbling motion of the object along with its composition, the release of volatile gases trapped beneath its surface, and on and on. None of the theories are without criticisms, but they're plausible, and the anomaly was very small. Also, the 'alien space probe' explanation isn't much better, as the acceleration is not consistent with what you'd see from a light sail either. Also, light sails don't tumble, especially not with the sail deployed.
Astronomers' current best guess is that 'Oumuamua originated within a planetary system in orbit around HD 292249, a sunlike yellow star 135 light years away, and took 3.8 million years to reach us. So, if you believe the 'alien probe' theory, then 3.8 million years ago aliens saw that Earth had life on it and sent a probe. And they did this knowing it would take millions of years to reach us… and then wouldn't even stop to say hello but just keep on going. Those are some very patient aliens! In about 100,000 years, 'Oumuamua will make it out of our solar system, and head out into the empty blackness of space. No, not on a 3.8 million year journey back to its home base, but just off to another random location.
Could that be the behavior of an alien probe? Maybe. But it's more likely the random actions of something mindlessly falling through the galaxy. Could it be a derelict abandoned spaceship, or a piece of some alien megastructure that exploded millions of years ago? Also, maybe. But there's no reason to believe it is, when it's so much more likely that it's just more random space debris, rather than an alien spacecraft which requires a whole heck of a lot more explaining and evidence. So, we can never 100 percent eliminate the possibility that our interstellar visitor is an alien battle cruiser, it's extremely unlikely and that theory just presents a whole slew of new questions without explaining any of our observations. And besides, it's fascinating enough on its own without bringing little green men into the picture.
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