Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 643 Mutual Annihilation of Membranes
The first requirement can be achieved by most level-three civilizations. A normally developed civilization with good computer technology can have the industrial strength to build an astronomical-grade particle collider. It's just that some civilizations are stronger, so the construction time is shorter and the lifespan of their creations is longer.

Of course, creating such a thing also requires that civilization to have the courage to burn its boats.

As for the second point, basically all level 3 civilizations cannot do it. So theoretically, level 3 civilizations will never discover the experimental anomalies of astronomical particle colliders. Fortunately, the technology in this universe seems to have a trace. This road is blocked by a tall wall, and there is a hidden window on the other side, allowing civilizations to spy on the clues on the other side of the high wall through this window.

This window is the basic theory of the applied technology that far exceeds that of this civilization.

Don’t think that every civilization is like this just because humans have a large number of theories that are completely impossible to realize. In fact, it is just the opposite. Take the Chiyan civilization for example. In the database of this civilization, humans have not found any traces of string theory and superstring theory.

They did infer from some information about the "super-long-distance communication core" component that has already been in the hands of humans that there is a way of communication in the universe that exceeds the speed of light, which is likely to be a different kind of particle. They also named this hypothetical particle, and also concluded that this particle has negative mass, and is superluminal in itself, but gains energy more slowly, and so on, which are similar characteristics to the tachyons in human theory.

But that's about it.

Therefore, if nothing unexpected happens, the Chiyan civilization will most likely be trapped at the peak of the third-level civilization. After all, they cannot even produce strong artificial intelligence independently.

So what is this tachyon-related theory? Humans happen to have it, although they currently don’t know whether this theory is correct or not.

There are descriptions of this in the human knowledge base.

That is the membrane in string theory, the discussion about D0 membrane. So what is D0 membrane? To understand D0 membrane, we must first know what membrane is, and then what D-membrane is.
As for membrane, as we all know, it is a description in string theory and superstring theory, a structure of string. However, D-membrane is a special kind of membrane. Humans define it as follows: D-membrane is where the string ends in space.

那么D0-膜呢？首先我们知道，一个弦就是一个1-膜。一个点粒子就是一个0-膜。一个膜状物在任何给定时间就是一个表面，是个2-膜，类似的还有三-膜、4-膜、两种5膜、6膜、7膜、8膜、9膜。

So it is easy to understand that D0-brane is a point particle.

It has mass. If string theory is used to explain quantum fluctuations, then it is the movement of the taut strings between the two D0-branes, and their movement is the quantum fluctuation phenomenon.

So what does it have to do with tachyons?

Of course it is related to point particles and particle colliders! From the perspective of string theory, some of the point particle collisions such as electron-electron and electron-anti-electron in the astronomical particle collision experiments conducted by humans are collisions of D0-branes.

So the question is, from the perspective of string theory, what will happen when D0-branes collide? The answer is that the mutual annihilation of D0-branes and anti-D0-branes, in addition to producing strong radiation, also produces a quantum fluctuation that is difficult to remove mathematically. The theory believes that it is the tachyon, something with imaginary mass.

When a D0-brane and an anti-D0-brane move away from each other, the energy of the tachyon must be enough to exceed the negative contribution of quantum fluctuations. At this time, the tachyons hidden in the laws of the universe are very stable. When a D0-brane and an anti-D0-brane approach each other, they have mass and so will attract each other gravitationally. However, because they have the same neutral charge, their attraction will be offset by repulsion. As a result, both parties are almost unaware of each other's existence. At this time, the tachyons are in an almost stable state.

When the D0-branes and anti-D0-branes are too close, these strings will turn into tachyons, or the tachyons hidden in the laws of the universe will be in an unstable state. When the D0-branes and anti-D0-branes really collide and annihilate each other, the tachyons hidden in the laws of the universe will roll away, rolling down from the apex of quantum fluctuations and turning into definite tachyons.

If tachyons appear and leave the collision laboratory, then obviously the conservation of mass and energy will change before and after the experiment. However, this phenomenon is affected by the fluctuations of the Higgs mechanism, so that the technology of the third-level civilization cannot detect any changes in the conservation of mass and energy.

However, if we look at the experiment through the "window" of string theory, we will not get this kind of result, and we will find that something is missing.

Of course, the so-called "discovery" here is not a real discovery, but only a discovery based on the mathematical derivation of string theory, not something that humans have actually accurately measured intuitively from experiments.

String theory certainly has problems that it cannot explain, but it happens to be used to explain the situation that humans are facing today.

But then again, if humans just encountered this situation and did not have the "long-distance communication core" obtained from the Red Flame Civilization, they probably would not think of the connection. Even if they thought of looking at the problem from the perspective of string theory, they would not realize that the deviation in the calculated values ​​was caused by tachyons, and would think that it was a wrong theory and wrong calculation.

If this is the case, even if humans have countless basic theories that surpass applied technology, they will not think about it, unless one day they are lucky enough to find a device related to long-distance communication in a fourth-level relic and can understand how it roughly works.

It can be seen from this that the barriers of the fourth-level civilization are not so easy to break through. It requires this civilization and this race to have a strong imagination and extremely good luck. Otherwise, this civilization may be trapped at this stage because of its rigid thinking.

Of course, luck is not absolute. After all, although some civilizations do not have the fourth-level civilization creations as inspiration, they can still realize the problem through a "flash of inspiration". This is inevitable, otherwise there would not be the first civilization to set foot on the fourth-level civilization.

However, the discovery of tachyons is not the end, because humans know very well that the sign of Level 4 civilization is not the discovery of tachyons, but the grand unified theory. And speaking of it, humans have not really discovered tachyons yet, after all, humans have not detected tachyons at all. If this theory is correct, then it can only be considered an indirect discovery.

What is the relationship between the tachyons that appeared in the experiment and the grand unified theory, humans still don’t know.

(End of this chapter)