Andrea Lepri - The Last Christmas On Earth

"Well then, let's not waste any more time," the President agreed, pointing to the seats.

"The Ring of Fire is a forty-thousand-kilometer-long belt that borders the Pacific Ocean basin, it looks like a horseshoe and is characterized by an uninterrupted series of oceanic trenches and volcanic chains that generate a strong instability, due to the continuous plate tectonic boundaries," Dr. Hope began. Then he paused and looked directly at the President to make sure he was following him. The President thought "as I predicted he has come here to talk about misfortunes" and for a moment he was tempted to send him away. Instead, he invited him, with a slight nod, to continue.

"About ninety percent of earthquakes in the world occur along the Ring of Fire, where, among other things, about seventy-five percent of the Volcanoes on Earth are located. And it is precisely in that area that the most devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions recently have occurred: the 2012 tsunami caused by a major earthquake in Indonesia, with the consequences that we all know; the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in 2010; and then there was the tremendous episode of the Fukushima earthquake. But it seems that Earth is awakening everywhere. In the opposite hemisphere, exactly in the same period, there was a great earthquake that devastated Christchurch in New Zealand. And then there are Kamchatka volcanoes in Russia and Indonesian ones like Merapi, Krakatoa, and many others, which since then have consistently increased their volcanic activity. Recently the Fuego and the Santiaguito also erupted in Guatemala ... and then many other incidents occurred that it is useless to mention," stressed Hope interrupting the rosary of catastrophes he was counting one after the other because he realized that the President had assumed an indecipherable expression on his face. He turned to Ross and Kowalsky hoping to get some help, he had been in that room for less than ten minutes and was already deeply uncomfortable.

"Go ahead, please, we don't have all night," Ross urged him, and he obeyed.

"Our planet intensifies periodically its seismic and volcanic activity, it is something more than normal, but we suspected that generally climatic changes could not have been caused exclusively by this phenomenon, that even if very intense it was not however sufficient to justify this significant changes in every part of the globe," said Hope, but immediately afterward he paused again. He had talked while everyone present was listening to him in silence without blinking; the way they looked at him made him feel more like a guest than ever before.

"Come on, don't stop right on top of it," the President urged him. Hope could not have said if he was really interested in what he was saying or if he was ironic about it, in any case, he continued to have the feeling that man actually blamed him, but he just couldn't understand the reason. "Very well" he resumed after drinking a glass of water, more to stall than to thirst. "The first thing we found out is that climate change is partly due to the fact that many places on the planet are no longer present where they were until recently."

"Explain that better please," the President invited him.

"Tectonic plates movements, a slight shift of Earth's rotation axis caused by all the events I mentioned earlier, and finally a slight variation of Earth's orbit due to an alteration of gravity fields. The result of the sum of the effects of these three changes, as I said earlier, is that many places are no longer in the geographical position they were in until a few months ago. And so now they are subject to different climatic situations."

"It's incredible," Kowalsky said. Ross nodded silently.

"I suppose you didn't ask to see me just to talk about the weather ..." the President said.

"Yes," agreed Hope, "here the climate changes are the minor problem."

"Are you kidding? So what would be the biggest one?" Kowalsky asked.

"What really opened our eyes was a sudden and drastic reduction of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we accidentally discovered during a research session on the thinning of the permafrost layer at the North Pole. When we arrived at the site, in order to find out the causes, we were stunned, the surface of that floating plastic island, thousands of square kilometers wide and thirty meters high, had reduced its size by about forty percent in just a few weeks. This phenomenon resulted from an intense overheating that caused the island to crumple upon itself. Whole shoals of fish floated upside down, literally boiled, and in many parts of the ocean, we recorded temperatures well above fifty-celsius degrees. And while we kept monitoring sky and sea and discussing several hypotheses, other scientists were making a series of discoveries that I would call scary," said Hope. Then, feeling more and more uncomfortable, he stopped again.

"... What are you talking about?"

"It's about solar activity."

"Explain yourself better."

"The Sun has a repetitive functioning cycle, approximately every eleven years our star records on the surface a peak of activity that for some weeks produces geomagnetic storms that end up right on us. This phenomenon will reach its climax soon, after which it should fade and return to normal."

"We already knew it," the President said, interrupting Benjamin Hope's speech for the first time, who was almost happy because that intervention meant they were listening carefully. "And it has always happened," the President continued, "I don't see what is so worrying. At worst, if our planet will really hit by solar wind particles, we will have serious problems for months and many people will die, but at least nothing irreparable will happen. This was established by your research a few years ago."

"I'm sorry to contradict you, but it changed a little since then," Hope objected. "The comparative analysis we did, using the spectrometer, showed something completely unexpected and not very reassuring."

"That is?" Kowalsky urged, paling slightly; when too many big words began to buzz in his head he lost the focus on his speech and got nervous.

"During our research, we identified deep fractures at many Mohorovicic discontinuity locations, which are nothing but wounds in Earth's crust, at very great depths, and so we finally realized what is causing these intense localized temperature increases. The nature of solar radiation is changing. Until recently, the frequency spectrum of emissions that reached the ground has always involved a range from three to ten Gigahertz, but lately, it started to fall and touched more than once values very close to 2.45 Gigahertz .

This fact has contributed significantly to triggering the phenomena that recently occurred in the area of the Ring of Fire. Moreover, it seems that emissions are about to become more or less stable around those values."

"I still don't understand what is your point," the President confessed.

"Practically, in this phase, the Sun is gradually turning into a huge magnetron, the tube for operating microwaves."

The President questioned Ross and Kowalsky with a quick glance, who responded by sticking their chin forward to indicate they too had not understood.

"I'll explain it easier. Let's take a silicone balloon, fill it with water and put it in a microwave oven. If we..."

"I get it now," the President interrupted again. "The silicone will not change, but the liquid inside will boil, and increasing its pressure due to overheating, it will explode, shattering the casing."

"Unless fractures are created on the surface of the balloon to allow some liquid to escape and to rebalance the internal pressure," Dr. Hope pointed out.

"So according to his theory the Sun is slowly overheating all the magma contained within the Planet sending it to boil, and if the right conditions are met we run the risk that the Earth will explode" hypothesized the President; then he stopped waiting for a confirmation.