You’ve probably all heard of Galileo.
He’s that madman, the first to point a telescope directly at the sun.
From that blinding golden light, he managed to wrench out a few dark specks, then told the entire world that the sun’s face had spots.
That was around the year 1610.
In an age when most people still believed the sun was perfect and flawless, he, with his own thirty-power telescope, shattered the very notion of "perfection."
Then the guy tilted his telescope up a few degrees, aimed it at Jupiter—the brightest object in the night sky—and picked out four small dots from the shimmering light beside it, four dots that moved with the planet.
At the time, almost everyone thought they were just four dim stars that happened to be near Jupiter.
But he declared they weren’t stars. They were moons, orbiting Jupiter.
Back in the early 17th century, that was a claim few sane people would dare to make.
But he said it anyway.
And in the end, he was right.
How similar that was to Li Dong’s current prediction: that in 17 months, there would be a Carrington Level solar flare.
It was the same brand of heresy.
Meanwhile, in the Cyan Dragon Study Group.
For a moment, no one spoke.
[Galileo Galilei]: Gentlemen, today on the solar equator, I saw a set of strange, horizontally flowing patterns.
After the message appeared, the group fell silent for a while.
Li Dong stared at the line of text, not rushing to reply.
’Horizontally flowing patterns?’
’What could that be?’
He didn’t understand at first.
In theory, with the resolution of telescopes in Galileo’s time, even seeing a complete sunspot was a stretch.
’And now he can see "flowing patterns" on the equator?’
Li Dong frowned subconsciously as he looked at the screen.
He rolled over and sat up in his top bunk.
[University Researcher]: Sir Galileo.
[University Researcher]: What exactly do these horizontal flows you mentioned look like?
[Galileo Galilei]: Ah, you are still here, sir.
[Galileo Galilei]: The patterns are not stationary. They travel slowly around the sun’s equator, like the surface of water being pushed by the wind, slowly surging forward.
[Galileo Galilei]: I have been observing for seven days and nights.
[Galileo Galilei]: Each day it has shifted. The speed is very slow, but it is definitely moving.
Li Dong: ’???’
’You stared at the sun for seven f*cking days? Aren’t you blind?’
’But this "horizontal flow"...’
Li Dong already had a good idea of what it was.
A large-scale circulatory oscillation on the sun’s surface.
In the framework of modern physics, they’re called equatorial Rossby waves, or low-latitude circulatory perturbations. In essence, they’re just a slow, quasi-periodic disturbance in the star’s low-latitude regions.
It wasn’t something unexplainable.
But people from Galileo’s era wouldn’t understand the term "Rossby waves."
Li Dong thought for a moment, then started typing.
[University Researcher]: Sir Galileo, what you are seeing is not an anomaly.
[University Researcher]: It is the sun’s own rhythm.
[Galileo Galilei]: Rhythm?
[University Researcher]: Just like the tides.
[University Researcher]: The surface of the sea is not always calm; it ebbs and flows with the phases of the moon.
[University Researcher]: The sun’s surface is the same.
[University Researcher]: It has its own pulse.
[University Researcher]: The horizontal flows you see are not an isolated phenomenon. They are the visible traces of the star’s slow breathing.
Li Dong had actually deliberated over these lines for a while before sending them.
’The sun’s pulse.’
’He felt a little embarrassed even using such an analogy, but for someone from the 17th century, it was the most intuitive explanation.’
The group was quiet for a few seconds.
[Galileo Galilei]: A pulse.
[Galileo Galilei]: Your analogy is most exquisite, sir.
[Galileo Galilei]: But if it is truly a pulse.
[Galileo Galilei]: Then with every beat, would it not also leave some trace upon its surface?
Li Dong was about to reply immediately, but at that moment, Galileo’s question hit him like a ton of bricks.
’It would leave a trace.’
’Of course it would leave a trace.’
Oscillations on the sun’s surface would leave phase markers in many observables: temperature, magnetic flux, spectral line shifts... almost everything visible would carry this rhythm.
The moment Li Dong thought of this, he scrambled out of bed, went to the desk below, and found the scratch paper he’d been using for his calculations.
On the scratch paper was the curve he had redrawn repeatedly over the past few days.
The eleven true signals extracted from the Wukong Satellite’s high-energy detector arm.
Laid out in a time series, their amplitudes were increasing.
What Li Dong had been doing all along was treating these eleven events as a gradual accumulation process, stacking up along the time axis.
He was trying every method possible to force out the window for the main Carrington Level peak from this accumulation trend.
’But from beginning to end, he had never seriously considered...’
’Could there be some kind of phase relationship between these eleven events?’
’Could it be that the timing of each anomaly wasn’t random, but was instead being steadily marked by a specific rhythm?’
That "horizontally flowing pattern" Galileo mentioned.
Seven days and nights, shifting every day.
This meant that the period of that rhythm could be independently observed.
’In other words...’
’If he ran a coherence test between the occurrence times of these eleven true signals and the phase curve of the sun’s low-latitude circulation...’
’If there really was Phase Locking between the two datasets...’
’Then his original 2.8σ would no longer be an isolated statistical claim from a single channel.’
’It would be the same physical picture, corroborated by two completely independent observational channels.’
’This was no longer a matter of forcing the statistics to 3.5σ.’
’It was a completely new line of reasoning, right from the foundation.’
Li Dong stared at the scratch paper.
He was completely stunned.
In the group, Galileo was still waiting for his answer.
Li Dong suppressed the urge to immediately verify his deduction and picked up his phone again.
[University Researcher]: It will, sir.
[University Researcher]: Every pulse leaves a trace.
[University Researcher]: It’s just that the trace is often very faint. One must stack many of them together to see the rhythm itself amidst the chaos.
[University Researcher]: In other words, the rhythm itself may be difficult to see at a glance.
[University Researcher]: But the footprints it leaves behind can be picked out, one by one.
After he finished writing this, he read it over again.
He suddenly found it a little funny.
He was originally replying to Galileo.
But it was also a perfect description of what he needed to do next.
[Galileo Galilei]: ...
[Galileo Galilei]: Sir.
[Galileo Galilei]: Every time I converse with you, some of the doubts in my heart are cleared away.
[Galileo Galilei]: I am in awe.
Li Dong exchanged a few pleasantries.
He was just about to put his phone down.
When another message popped up on the screen.
[Galileo Galilei]: Sir, I have often noticed before.
[Galileo Galilei]: Sir Einstein, Sir Bohr, Sir Mendeleev, and Sir Mendel—after speaking with you, they all said they had gained new insights.
[Galileo Galilei]: Only today has it been my turn to personally benefit from your wisdom.
[Galileo Galilei]: You are truly a Wise Man.
Li Dong’s expression turned a little strange when he saw this.
’What did Galileo just say?’
’He said he saw my Dialogue with Einstein, Bohr, Mendeleev, and Mendel?’
But Li Dong knew,
that these great minds weren’t all in the same parallel universe.
So they couldn’t see all of Li Dong’s Dialogue.
’But Galileo can see all of it?’
’Come on, Galileo.’
’Aren’t your eyes a little over-the-top? Where’d you get your laser eye surgery, man? Weren’t you supposed to have gone blind later in life?’
’How can you even see through dimensions now?’
Just as Li Dong was making his sarcastic comment.
[Galileo Galilei has sent you an exclusive red packet]
Seeing the red packet, Li Dong immediately lost the mood to be sarcastic and quickly tapped it open.
[You have received Galileo Galilei’s gift]
[Item Obtained: Dome Observation (Basic Edition)]
[Type: Permanent Passive Skills]
[Description: This is a gift from the "Stellar Cloud-Pusher." In the winter of 1610, with a thirty-power telescope, he saw the sunspots the world refused to acknowledge in the sun’s blinding glare. From the shimmering light beside Jupiter, he identified the four moons that would later be named in his honor. Now, he shares with you the vision that allowed him to discern truth from glare and dust.]
[Effect: From now on, when faced with problems involving weak signals, low signal-to-noise ratios, or the need to distinguish truth from fluctuations, you will be able to "see" the traces hidden beneath the noise.]
Li Dong stared at the description on the screen.
"Dome Observation... seeing traces within the noise?"
He subconsciously shifted his gaze back to the stack of scratch paper.
The eleven true signals on the scratch paper were still laid out quietly in chronological order.
But this time...
Li Dong merely glanced down.
The world before his eyes seemed to slow down.
The eleven amplitudes, scattered unevenly across the timeline—he could have recited the position and magnitude of each one with his eyes closed.
But now.
[Interval between the eleven true signals, high-frequency residuals of the sequence difference...]
[Envelope period approximately... days]
[Phase center point...]
[Phase Locking, significant cross-sample consistency]
A series of numbers floated slowly before his eyes.
These eleven events were not isolated incidents accumulating on a timeline.
Their very moments of occurrence were marked by a stable period.
Cross-sample consistency.
Li Dong shot bolt upright.
In other words, as long as he could independently recover this period from public observation data on the sun’s low-latitude circulation...
...he could use two completely independent observational channels to lock down the "precursor-to-main peak" pathway.
Li Dong grabbed a pen and quickly jotted down the new pathway that had just appeared in his mind onto the scratch paper.
The sky outside the window was already completely dark.
Yet all his fatigue had vanished.
Galileo was right.
Every pulse.
Leaves a trace.
It’s just that for this trace, someone has to be willing to spend seven days and nights picking it out, piece by piece.

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