The last human in the universe

Chapter 147

When Zhao Changxing and the others returned to the Yuanhang spacecraft, the space carrier that sent them would be useless.Its fate will be the same as those spaceships disposed of by people before, and it will stay in the solar system forever in another way.

At this moment, it already possesses extremely high speed, which gives it extremely high kinetic energy.After a slight orbit correction, it will hit Vesta at a smaller angle, transferring all its energy to this dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, and changing its forward orbit.

This is the last ship to be disposed of.

Under people's gaze, it gradually moved away from the Yuanhang spacecraft, flew into the vast space, and disappeared.

At this moment, the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft has increased to about 800 kilometers per second, and it is still rising.

As the emergent faults are dealt with one by one, and various emergencies and unexpected situations are continuously resolved, the positive-antimatter annihilation reactor and ion thruster can finally reach the design efficiency.

Every second that passes, its speed increases by 0.02 meters.

At this moment, a total of about 40 people in the entire Yuanhang spacecraft remained awake.All the rest, whether deep space people or Moyun Litar people, are in hibernation.

Life is still going on, just like people are still living in the space city in Sedna's low earth orbit.

After leaving the Sedna star, the fourth year of the voyage, and the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft increased to about 2500 kilometers per second. Through the telescope, Zhao Changxing finally saw that the previously arranged methods had worked.

The spacecraft left over by humans with a total mass of tens of billions of tons hit the predetermined asteroid at the highest speed that their engines could support, changing its orbit and making it harmless to humans and animals. , Transformed into a killer capable of changing the orbit of a dwarf planet like Vesta.

It began to rush toward the inner solar system.And, under the acceleration of the sun's gravity, its speed will become faster and faster.

In the 17th year of the voyage, the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft increased to about [-] kilometers per second, and when the distance from the sun was as high as two trillion kilometers, the ultra-high-precision optical telescope array observed that the asteroid accurately hit Vesta. .

But whether its impact caused the expected orbital change of Vesta is uncertain.Because it is so small, people can observe the impact, but at the moment it is not even possible to see its actual shape.

But it doesn't matter, if its orbit really changes as expected, then, after about 5 years, people will observe the impact again near the sun, in the accretion disk of the black hole trace.

At that time, by observing the gravitational disturbance of the black hole on the sun, it will be possible to confirm whether it has produced the changes that people expect.

Now, keep sailing, keep accelerating.

The distance at this moment is about 70 times farther than the distance between Sedna and the sun.But even at such a great distance, the Sun's brightness is as high as -8.9 magnitude.

——It should have been only -7.6, but compared to the past, the sun has become brighter due to the influence of the black hole, so it has reached its current brightness.

As a comparison, the brightness of Venus seen from the earth is only -4.7 magnitude, which is only a few tenths of the brightness of the sun at this moment.

This brightness is even enough to cast shadows visible to the naked eye for objects.

This is the sun.Such a powerful sun.

This is a vast space that is more than one trillion kilometers away from the sun. This is a place that humans have never reached before.There is almost nothing here except for interstellar dust.This place probably belongs to the category of the Neort cloud, but during the voyage of these years, people have not observed any macroscopic stars.

not a single one.Even if it is as small as a pebble, a single stone has never passed.

In front of human beings, the universe uses this extreme emptiness and vastness to unscrupulously demonstrate its strength.

But it's not really empty here.Even here, on average, there are one to ten molecules per cubic meter, as well as certain atomic and subatomic particles.

By comparison, on the surface of the moon, there would have been about 4000 billion molecules per cubic meter.

The big difference is evident.

But now, even such a thin matter density has caused considerable trouble to the Yuanhang spacecraft.

The extremely high speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft makes the impact of these interstellar particles also have a very high energy.When they hit the outer shell of the Yuanhang spacecraft, they would excite all kinds of secondary radiation, seriously affecting the facilities and equipment inside the spacecraft.

This is the radiation that even the most advanced materials that humans can manufacture can only rely on sufficient thickness to resist.At this moment, the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft has only reached 0.33% of the speed of light.

In this almost empty space, the Yuanhang spacecraft is advancing rapidly.

During these years, the Yuanhang spacecraft passed through some small interstellar molecular clouds or atomic clouds, and every time it passed through, the sober operation and maintenance personnel of the spacecraft felt like they were facing a formidable enemy.

Compared with ordinary interstellar space, the average material density of interstellar molecular clouds may be tens of thousands of times higher than ordinary interstellar space.Correspondingly, the intensity of the particle impact will also increase tens of thousands of times.This makes people have to be careful.

People at this moment, just like people in the feudal era when they explored the ocean above the earth, faced storms, reefs and other things, they avoided as much as possible, and only rushed over when they could not be avoided.

From this point of view, it would be unwise to start a war with space vehicles that can reach extremely high speeds close to the stars.The reason is very simple. The density of matter near the stars is too high. If the spacecraft does not have high enough protection, the spacecraft may be destroyed by radiation before the war begins.

At the same time, if these interstellar substances are viewed from the perspective of war, they also have considerable strategic significance.

The defender can use these interstellar substances to arrange their own defense plan, so that the enemy cannot quickly penetrate the defense.If the attacker also has enough information, he can even find a safe sailing route from it, so as to launch a surprise attack.

The information obtained during this voyage made Zhao Changxing start to think more deeply about everything about interstellar war from a more fundamental point of view.

Anyway, most people are in hibernation at the moment, and there are not so many things for him to deal with.He devoted all his free time to studying and thinking.

This is a journey to comprehensively improve myself and make myself more adaptable to the development of civilization.

Time is still passing slowly, and after another 5 years, the telescope, which has been watching the direction of the sun, finally reported a good news to Zhao Changxing.

People have observed the abnormal movement of the black hole.And this kind of change can only be caused by the impact of Vesta.

This means that before people left, the layout left in the solar system really produced an effect.

From now on, that black hole will be much closer to the sun.The speed of devouring the sun's matter will be faster, and the radiation released will be more violent.The environment in the solar system will be even worse.

"Let's leave this mess to the Moyun Litar civilization."

The voyage is still going on.After the acceleration phase was finally over, and the speed of Yuanhang spacecraft reached the predetermined 14.5 kilometers per second, the distance between it and the sun expanded to about 1.5 trillion kilometers.Or... about [-] light-years.

At this moment, even though the brightness of the sun has increased again compared to before, from this distance, its brightness is still reduced to -2.37 magnitude.

This brightness is probably slightly dimmer than when Mars was seen from the earth.But it's still a solid star.

It remains the brightest star in the entire sky.

After sailing again for more than 6 years, the distance between Yuanhang spacecraft and the sun has expanded to 2 light-years.

This is a milestone distance.Because this means that since then, the Yuanhang spacecraft has truly left the solar system and the gravitational control of the sun.

This is the edge of the solar system's Oort cloud.

After this distance, the gravitational pull of the remaining stars will be greater than that of the sun.The gravitational force of the sun can no longer control the movement of any matter.

It's time to say goodbye.

But there is no ceremony at this moment.People are still busy, maintaining the normal operation of the Yuanhang spacecraft.Zhao Changxing just came to the porthole of the spacecraft, looked at the brightest star in the universe through the special glass, and waved his hand.

In the future, Zhao Changxing will still maintain his previous life trajectory.If there's a major incident in the ship, then deal with it - these years have not been smooth sailing.In fact, there will be a major crisis every 1.2 years on average, and if it is not handled properly, it may even endanger the entire spacecraft.But fortunately, every time it was successfully disposed of by people.

In the most dangerous time, Zhao Changxing even had to urgently wake up more than 3000 engineers, scientists, and technicians before successfully disposing of it.

In the rest of his spare time, Zhao Changxing was constantly learning and thinking.

Up to now, he has even passed the doctoral examinations of more than 20 majors anonymously.

But this is still not enough.Far from enough.

Time is still slowly passing by.When the distance from the sun expanded to about 6.6 light years, Zhao Changxing, who was still studying, was awakened by a piercing alarm bell.

He glanced at the center console, but he didn't find anything wrong with the spaceship.

Xiaoxi's voice came over at this moment.

"Captain, 5 seconds ago, at a distance of about 1.6 kilometers from our spacecraft, a violent explosion seemed to have occurred. Moreover, the source of the explosion seemed to maintain the same speed and heading as ours. Because I did not observe it change in distance."

Zhao Changxing frowned slightly.

(End of this chapter)