THE ASTROPHAGE BUDGET · FICTION, PRICED Project Hail Mary (2021): a microbe is dimming the Sun
one declared miracle, and everything downstream charged full price the book's numbers are claims, quoted with their chapters the bench's arithmetic is closed-form: E = mc², a cross-section, a half-truth detector Tabby's Star, KATRIN and the real Sahara stand in for reality run the clocks · price the swarm · fly the line · audit the farm
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Evidence
fact ⇄ what kind of claim · live
'The sun is 0.01 percent less bright than it should be'; 'a full percent over the next nine years... In twenty years... five percent' (ch. 2); doubling 'just over eight days' (ch. 5); a neutrino at 'one twenty-billionth the mass of a proton' (ch. 13); 25.984 µm; 96.415 °C; 37 million km off the pole (ch. 1)
the novel's own numbers, quoted with their chapters: the claims this bench prices
REPORTED
(3/2)kT at 96.415 °C = 47.77 meV; one 25.984 µm photon = 47.72 meV; the book's neutrino = 46.91 meV: three numbers from different chapters lock to 0.11-1.7%
the bench's arithmetic on the book's own figures: the homework, verified
EXACT
1% of the Sun = 3.8×10²⁴ W = 42,600 t/s of banked mass; 7.7×10²⁶ covering cells; a 0.92 c photon boost keeps 20.4%; a breeding cycle emits 95.8% as one wavelength
closed-form: a covering fraction, a cross-section, the photon-rocket equation
EXACT
KIC 8462852: ~0.34%/yr fade, dips to 22%, chromatic (INST-21); KATRIN < 450 meV, Planck Σ < 120 meV; the real Sahara ~6 kWh/m²/day; world energy ~20 TW
the real world's side of the comparison, from published measurements
MEASURED
The line's luminosity (a stated migration cycle), the 1 GWt carrier reactor, the visual width of the ribbon in the 3D view
models with stated assumptions; the exaggeration is labelled on the view itself
MODELLED
Whether a novel that locks three numbers into one but keeps three clocks that disagree deserves Reading A (the homework shows) or Reading B (the price list has footnotes)
the one question this bench refuses to close for you
READING
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