The legend of Tiga

Chapter 2103 The Universe and Ants

So far, the farthest place humans have ever visited is Melani, which was visited by Xincheng and the Romus III. It is 20 billion kilometers away from the sun and is the first time humans have set foot in the Kuiper Belt. If all the crew members of the Romus III except Xincheng had not died, this would definitely be an astronomical event worthy of celebration by all mankind.

However, this historic expedition by mankind is still 180 billion kilometers away from the Oort Cloud, the spherical cloud that surrounds the solar system, which means that mankind has only walked one percent of the distance.

The Oort Cloud is even larger, with a radius of one light year, or more than 9.4 trillion kilometers.

The fastest aircraft currently owned by humans is the Victory Condor, which uses the NeoMAX propulsion system and has a maximum speed of 5/12 the speed of light. This means that if the Victory Condor starts from the Earth, it will need to fly at the fastest speed for eight years before it can fly out of the Oort Cloud.

This can only be achieved when the energy is unlimited, the parts are not worn out, and the aircraft has no problems. In fact, the Victory Condor's new Max engine can't operate sustainably for eight hours, let alone eight years.

Once it breaks out of the Oort Cloud, it enters the 'Local Interstellar Cloud', which is about thirty light years in size. That is to say, the Condor has been flying at its fastest speed since 1777 until today to fly out of the 'Local Interstellar Cloud' and enter the 'Local Galaxy Bubble'.

The 'Local Galaxy Bubble' spans a distance of 300 light years. The Victorious Eagle would have to fly at the fastest speed since Alexander the Great's Eastern Expedition in 400 BC until today, in order to break out of the 'Local Galaxy Bubble' and enter the Gould Belt with a diameter of more than 3,000 light years. To cross the Gould Belt, the Victorious Eagle would need to fly continuously for 24,000 years.

Gould's belt is only a small part of the Orion spiral arm. Because the Orion spiral arm is at least 26,000 light years long, it would take the Condor at least 280,000 years to fly continuously.
But the Orion Spiral Arm is just a small spiral arm of the Milky Way. The diameter of the Milky Way is 200,000 light years. It takes the Condor Heroes 1.6 million years to fly from one end of the Milky Way to the other.

The Local Group of galaxies where the Milky Way is located covers an area of ​​10 million light years. The Condor Heroes would have to start flying from the dinosaur era and continue for 80 million years before it could fly across the Local Group of galaxies.

The Virgo Cluster of galaxies that includes the Local Group is even larger, with a diameter of more than 100 million light-years. To cross it, it would take the Condor Heroes 800 million years to fly. By that time, life on Earth would have entered the multicellular stage.

The Laniakea Supercluster, which consists of multiple galaxy clusters including the Virgo Cluster, the Hydra Cluster, and the Centaurus Cluster, has a diameter of more than 500 million light-years.

What a huge number this is! Take the Milky Way for example. There are more than 100,000 such galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster. The Milky Way alone has hundreds of billions of stars, and the total number of stars in the entire Laniakea Supercluster reaches a terrifying number of trillions.

This is not even the extent of counting all the grains of sand in the Ganges, but rather counting all the E. coli in the Ganges.

Is the Koraniakea Supercluster the largest structure in the universe?

Of course not, because humans only discovered a few years ago a huge superstructure with a diameter of more than 10 billion light-years, a width of more than 7 billion light-years, and a thickness of 1 billion light-years - the Hercules-Corona Borealis Wall.

The number of galaxies in it is simply incalculable, because the current data is not the final size of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Wall, but the limit of human observation.

From this we can see that the Laniakea Supercluster where the Milky Way is located is naturally also contained in a huge superstructure similar to the Hercules-Corona Borealis Wall, but it is difficult to observe it because we are in it. There may even be even larger cosmic structures above the Hercules-Corona Borealis Wall, but they have not yet been discovered by humans.

After all, human cosmology previously believed that the limit of the universe was 1.2 billion light years, and before the discovery of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, it was believed that the Laniakea Supercluster was the largest. The range of the universe currently observable by humans is 46 billion light years, and the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which spans 10 billion light years, has been discovered. With the advancement of technology, when the range of the observable universe becomes larger, we will definitely discover even larger cosmic structures.

This is human beings' exploration of the universe, just like a blind man touching an elephant. They can only know the part they touch, but know nothing about other parts. They don't even know how to guess or how to think.

Just like the human body is made up of cells, cells are made up of molecules, molecules are made up of atoms, atoms contain neutrons, neutrons are cut into protons, protons contain electrons, and electrons contain quarks.

If the universe is a person, then the earth is equivalent to a tiny quark, or maybe even smaller than a quark. On such a planet, no matter how much intrigue, power struggle, or even bloodshed there is, the final winner is only the overlord of a quark that is so small that it cannot be seen even with the most advanced microscope, not to mention that he is just one of the countless quarks.

Compared with the vastness of the universe and the infinity of time and space, human beings and the earth are nothing but ant dust.

Chiba Makoto was staring at the starry sky in a daze, thinking of the infinite universe, the infinite time and space. Eight or nine billion people are crowded on this small planet, and how many of them have been toiling day and night for a room all their lives. Even if they look up at the starry sky, they can only sigh at the vastness of the universe, and then they can only helplessly continue to bow their heads and work like beasts of burden.

But now I have the ability to go to the vast universe, to see the wonders that humans on Earth cannot observe in their lifetime, to see if the triple star system of Alpha Centauri is really unsolvable, to see the supernova remnants in the center of the Milky Way and the spectacular sight of supermassive black holes swallowing stars, and
With so many planets and so much time and space, why do we have to squeeze into the tiny Earth?

Just one Earth has so much magnificence, and the universe is so vast, how many unimaginable wonders are there?

Listening to Chiba Makoto's stories about his vision of the universe, Maya couldn't help but start to fantasize as well. What emerged in her mind were the images and pictures about the universe that she had seen on TV and the Internet.

A small photo of a black hole can trigger a worldwide carnival, with all mankind celebrating progress. But if there is a chance to see the true appearance of a black hole with one's own eyes and look at the dazzling accretion disk, many people will flock to it, even if they will be swallowed by the black hole in the next second.

Especially those scientists who have devoted their entire lives to studying the universe. Their minds travel in the universe, but they can only stay on Earth, using various telescopes to look at long-exposure photos and understand the universe by analyzing the starlight from the distant past.

It would be great if we could see with our own eyes what these distant galaxies look like today, as well as celestial bodies that exist only in theory or even in our imagination, such as the final destination of most stars in the universe, completely cooled white dwarfs - black dwarfs, dark matter stars that are believed to be the first generation of stars after the Big Bang, supergravity objects that are more extreme than black holes - boson stars, transitional objects between neutron stars and black holes - quark stars, and so on.

Any one of these alone would be enough to inspire scientists who have devoted their entire lives to studying the universe.

No matter how rich human imagination is, it cannot compare to the magic of the universe.

It’s just that humans don’t have the ability to travel deep into the universe in the short term, and even leaving the solar system requires professional astronauts.

However, Chiba Makoto will not be constrained by the shortcomings of technology. He can easily go to farther places, witness the magic of the universe with his own eyes, appreciate the wonders of the universe, and find out whether the universe has an edge.

(End of this chapter)