Chapter 1 Preface

Come, let us poke a point in the historical coordinates of mankind.

In 1887, longitude 8 degrees 24 minutes east, latitude 49 degrees north.

The small German city of Karlsruhe.

This is the northern gate of the lush Black Forest, where the Rhine River meanders quietly. It is a quaint little town with scattered buildings in the sun, nestled among the lush trees in an orderly manner.

On this quiet and peaceful afternoon, the sunlight shines through the gaps in the curtains of a building at the University of Karlsruhe and falls on the feet of young people.

The room was dimly lit, with a long wooden table on the floor.

At the end of the long table, there is a cylinder placed horizontally, with layers of copper wires tightly wound around it. This is an inductor.

In the middle of the long table was a barbell placed horizontally - at least it looked like a barbell.

There is a hollow copper ball as big as a human head at each end of this thing, and the two copper balls are connected by a thin solid copper tube. It is about two meters long. At first glance, it looks like an elongated and thin barbell, but it is different from a barbell because the copper rod in the middle is broken in the middle, with a two-centimeter gap dividing the thing into two.

The two hollow copper balls are connected to the inductor coils behind them with wires.

The inductor is connected to the battery under the table with wires.

Add to that the open copper ring in the young man's hand, and the whole set of equipment is complete.

He knew very well what each component of this equipment was used for. The coil was a booster, which could raise the voltage of the weak battery to a high enough level, and the two copper balls were capacitors, which were used to store electric charge. One side was the positive pole and the other was the negative pole. When the charge stored in the capacitors on both sides reached a certain amount, the high-voltage current could instantly break through the air in the gap.

The young man turned on the circuit breaker.

There was a gentle "pop" sound.

Like lightning, a light blue arc jumped in the gap in the middle of the copper rod.

It’s not over yet.

This is not the purpose of the experiment.

He raised the C-shaped copper ring in his hand - the copper ring had a small opening, slowly approached the table, and held his breath.

One step, two steps, three steps...

There was a very subtle "pop" sound, like a ghost, but it did not come from the experimental device on the table, but from the copper ring in the young man's hand.

Transparent, elf-like, weak electric sparks burst out in the opening of the C-shaped copper ring.

His eyes widened in surprise. After unremitting efforts, he finally caught the invisible and intangible ghost floating in the air.

Somewhere in the dark, there was a mysterious force that transferred the energy from the spark generator on the table to the copper ring in his hand. There were no wires, no media, and no connection, but flames began to dance on this small, independent copper ring. It was truly a miracle.

Maxwell's theory was perfectly verified.

On this day, humans consciously and actively sent out the first electromagnetic wave into the universe.

This young man who taught at the University of Karlsruhe was named Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

This year, he was thirty years old.

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Let us poke another point in the historical coordinates of mankind.

July 1, 1998.

The Nanjing shortwave team composed of Bai Zhen, Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen participated in the IARU Shortwave World Championship. They used an Icom725 shortwave radio. Under the scorching sun, they set up the radio and antenna on Purple Mountain, set up a small table on the grass under the shade of the trees, and started making external calls from 8 a.m. that day.

The antenna is a dipole antenna installed horizontally in the north-south direction and tied between two trees with a rope. From a distance, it looks like a clothesline.

"CQ! CQ! CQ!" Bai Zhen held a microphone in one hand and a pen in the other, speaking English that sounded like it came from a pickle jar, sitting in the channel and setting up a stall, "Bravo-Golf-Four-Mike-Xray-Hotel Contest! BG4MXH! QSL?"

"Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK! QSL?" Soon a clear reply came from the headset.

Bai Zhen made an OK gesture and began to record the communication log.

The other party's call sign is JA1...1...

What's behind it?

"Juliet-Alfa-One...again?" Bai Zhen had no choice but to ask him to say it again.

"Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK!"

The call sign starts with J, and he is a Japanese.

No wonder your English is worse than mine.

Bai Zhen thought silently in his heart, and replied at the same time: "Roger! Roger! You are 59! QSL?"

"QSL! Thank you!"

"Thank you! 73!"

“73!”

The Japanese are terrible at speaking English.

This was the 69th radio station they contacted, and everything went smoothly.

The IARU Shortwave Championship is the world's largest amateur radio enthusiasts event. Points are awarded based on the distance and number of radio stations contacted. The more radio stations contacted and the farther the distance, the higher the score. Three points are awarded for contacting a Japanese radio station, and five points are awarded if contact can be made to Europe or America.

"CQ! CQ..."

Calling the next one immediately began, their goal was to contact 500 stations during the 48-hour competition.

But before Bai Zhen could finish his words, as soon as he let go of the microphone, an extremely sharp noise rang out in the channel, piercing his eardrum like a needle.

"I suck it!"

"What's wrong?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen, who were squatting on the side playing cards, turned their heads.

"It seems like there's interference..." Bai Zhen pulled the headset off his head, "What's going on?"

"Where did the interference come from on the mountain?" Wang Ning put the Jianlibao in his hand on the table, reached out to take the headset, and put it on his head, "Fuck!"

"There's a ghost screaming." Zhao Bowen also listened, "Let's see the 6-meter wave?"

"There is a Sadako in 6 meters."

"12 meters?"

"There is a chestnut in 12 meters."

"What the hell is a chestnut?"

"There are ghosts screaming on every channel." Bai Zhen casually turned the FM knob on the radio, a little surprised, "We are being suppressed by something on the entire frequency band."

Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen subconsciously looked up at the sky. Are there any aircraft passing by?

The competition would be ruined if something like this happened, but Bai Zhen was unwilling to accept that. He turned down the volume, slowly turned the knob, and swept through all the amateur channels.

Perhaps there really was a powerful interference source nearby, which showed indiscriminate suppression on any channel, and the noise covered all valid signals.

"Nothing can be done." Wang Ning squatted back and continued playing cards. "Old Bai, don't worry about it. Come on, play cards!"

"Play cards!" said Zhao Bowen.

Bai Zhen ignored the idiot. He lay on the table and tried to debug the radio. After more than ten minutes, there was still no effect. Even an experienced HAM like Bai Zhen had never seen a situation like today. He even secretly suspected that Nanjing was attacked by EMP. Was there a war? Was the United States attacking?

"Old White, stop guarding... It's over. Do you want a popsicle? Let's go buy some."

Wang Ning squatted under the shade of a tree and shouted weakly, lifting the hem of his white vest to fan himself.

It was so hot in Nanjing in early July that even a dog couldn't muster up any energy.

Bai Zhen wiped the sweat from his forehead and suddenly became excited, "Wait... wait! I heard a sound!"

"What's that sound?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen were squatting far away under a tree. They stopped playing cards, stuck out their tongues, and felt as hot as dogs.

"Someone is talking..." Bai Zhen slowly turned the knob and frowned. "The voice is very faint. I can't hear it clearly."

Icom725 could not filter out all the noise. Bai Zhen could hear faint human voices amid the noisy background noise. He squinted his eyes and concentrated his attention.

"CQ..."

"How do you prove your identity?"

"…Look up to the sky, it's above your head!"

"Meteor, look, it's a meteor!"

"We have to put this thing in the designated location, otherwise we won't be able to kill it. The power of nuclear weapons is also limited."

"They came down from the sky."

"Save me, please, save me..."

The chaotic voices of men and women mixed together in a noisy mess, and Bai Zhen was confused. Who was talking nonsense in the channel?

"We'll see each other again."

With a "click", all the sounds stopped abruptly. Bai Zhen raised his head and found that Zhao Bowen had turned off the radio.

He took off the headset on Bai Zhen's head and said, "Stop it, stop it. Let's go down the mountain to buy some food! Let's buy some old popsicles! Old - popsicles - yo-ho-!"

In this year's world competition, Bai Zhen and his two companions ended in failure due to inexplicable interference.

The following year, Bai Zhen failed the college entrance examination and joined the army. He served as a communications soldier at the North Sea Fleet Observation and Communication Station for twelve years until he retired in 2012. After demobilization, he has been driving for Didi in urban Nanjing.

In the same year that Bai Zhen joined the army, Zhao Bowen was admitted to the Department of Physics of Nanjing University. After graduating with a doctorate, he stayed at the university to work. He is currently an associate researcher at Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory, and has been engaged in space physics and electromagnetism research.

Wang Ning continued to wander around for many years and finally joined the Nanjing Radio Commission Office, where he served as the head of the radio monitoring station until today.

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Let us finally poke a point in the long river of time.

Now.

Right now.

You are looking at the screen of your mobile phone - no matter it is Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung or OV, they are fundamentally no different from the C-shaped copper ring in Hertz's hand back then. All texts, pictures, sounds and videos are modulated into electromagnetic waves, received by the mobile phone antenna through communication base stations and wireless routers, and then demodulated into signals that humans can understand and enter your eyes and ears.

Every minute and every second of this world, long waves pass through the deep ocean, short waves oscillate in the ionosphere, and UV waves rampage in the city. In places invisible to our naked eyes, they form another world.

It has been more than 130 years since humans first captured electromagnetic waves in 1887. Theoretically, due to the law of conservation of energy, the first electromagnetic wave actively emitted by humans is still oscillating in the universe. Although it has decayed to the point where no one can capture it, it is like a tiny ghost wandering in this noisy world. It may cause an electron in a component of your mobile phone's integrated circuit to jump suddenly, like a flash of spark, so weak that no one can notice it except this universe.

At that moment, you rubbed your sleepy eyes, and you didn't realize that after a long time of one hundred and thirty years, you received a greeting from the young man named Hertz.

This is a story about radio. This story happened in 2019, and nearly two years have passed since then. During these two years, the author spent a lot of energy visiting everywhere and sorting out materials from all parties before he had some confidence to compile it into a manuscript and make it public, striving to avoid major mistakes. If anyone sees my work, I hope I will forgive it.

All the characters in this article are pseudonyms:

(End of this chapter)