Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 717: The signal of zero and one?
As humans continued on their journey to the stars and were on the final 347-light-year journey, the Tianqin received a message from the outer exploration ship team of the Grand Fleet. Because the Grand Fleet was sailing at warp speed, the message was not transmitted by electromagnetic waves, but by tachyon communication, which can only be mastered by a Level 4 civilization.

Today, humanity's communication systems have all been upgraded, and communications between spaceships and warships have been replaced with tachyon communications. However, traditional communication systems have not been completely abandoned and are still in use inside each ship.

The human internal network system is actually included in the traditional communication system. The traditional electronic technology communication system is too convenient, and there is no delay problem when using it in the spacecraft.

As for the communication between spacecraft, there is no way to solve it. It does not mean that traditional electromagnetic wave communication will fail after the spacecraft enters warp speed. After all, both spacecraft are in warp speed. From the perspective of light, the two spacecraft are actually stationary.

The problem lies in the communication between the spacecraft in warp state and the spacecraft not in warp state. Traditional optoelectronic communication cannot solve this problem, and only tachyon communication can be used.

So the communication form of human civilization today is a combination of the two, tachyon communication between ships and traditional electromagnetic waves inside. As for why tachyon communication is not used inside ships? The reason is very simple. Humans do not have tachyon conductors as lines like photoconductors.

However, when the signal was transmitted to the Tianqin, the scientists who saw the signal were also confused for a while, because they had no idea what information the signal carried, but they knew it was definitely not a signal form that could appear in nature.

Because according to the report from the detection spacecraft team, what they received was not an electromagnetic wave signal, but a tachyon signal of tachyon communication.

Those who are familiar with the four fundamental forces know that in the macroscopic universe, only electromagnetic force and gravitational force are long-range forces, so there are only two types of waves that can propagate in the universe, namely electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves.

The propagation of tachyons is not in the form of waves, it is just a superluminal particle that carries identifiable information, and its detection mechanism is a bit like neutrino detection. But its mechanism of action is very different, or the range is wider, which is why it can be used for tachyon detection.

The basic principle of tachyon detection is somewhat similar to the detection principle of radar electromagnetic wave reflection. It also shoots a stream of tachyons from a warship into outer space, or releases it in a targeted manner. After all, tachyons themselves travel faster than the speed of light, so no force is required at all.

These diffused tachyons will encounter various things in the universe, such as planets, spaceships, molecular clouds, gravitational waves, etc. Yes, gravitational waves that belong to space-time fluctuations can also be reflected back, and the reflectivity is stronger than other objects.

This type of tachyon used for communication and detection seems to be very sensitive to changes in space and time. Humans don't know why, they only know that this is the effect.

The tachyons that act on macroscopic objects will be captured by receivers belonging to the same detector system after reflection. These reflected tachyons will have different spin properties due to the different objects they touch. It is through the detection of these properties that humans achieve tachyon detection.

The amazing thing is that this touch reflected back does not affect macroscopic objects, and there is not even any pressure similar to "light pressure", so a spacecraft without a tachyon detector installed will not realize that it is being detected by tachyons.

Tachyons seem to have a closer relationship with gravity among the four fundamental forces. They are born from the grand unified force field, but their response to the electromagnetic field is not as strong as that to the gravitational field.

Therefore, tachyon detection can clearly detect stars in the space ahead, but it is more difficult to detect objects like spaceships, and the farther they are, the more difficult it is. For example, the current tachyon detection technology of human beings can achieve almost zero-delay communication across a distance of 2 light years for communication, but it will be halved for detection because the tachyons need to return.

Any farther away, the tachyons generated by humans would be distorted, and no information could be obtained from their properties.

So generally speaking, receiving a tachyon signal basically means that the party that sent the tachyon is within 2 light years of the receiving party, if the other party's tachyon technology is as advanced as humans. Because if it is farther away, humans will not be able to receive the tachyon signal. This is another characteristic of the tachyon. The distance it runs in the universe is positively correlated with the strength of the grand unified force field that generates it. Once it exceeds its fidelity distance, it will disappear directly in the universe, as if it has returned to the universe itself and been absorbed by space itself, and there will be no trace of it.

And precisely because of the properties of tachyons, they are not suitable for cosmic broadcasting, unless there is an extremely powerful tachyon generator that can reach thousands of light years. But if you think about it, you know that the possibility of such a situation is very small.

Although human beings have not yet developed technology in the field of tachyons, combined with their understanding of the background of the universe, they know that it is impossible. Because if there is such a powerful tachyon detection, it means that a level 4 or 5 civilization has the ability to clearly detect things in an area thousands of light years away from itself. With this ability, those low-level civilizations and life planets would have been swept away long ago, and there would be no chance for development.

Therefore, tachyon broadcasting is unlikely, and for this reason, humans were indeed shocked after receiving this message that was obviously sent by intelligent life.

Judging from my own experience, two light years is really too close.

If the unknown civilization sending out the tachyon signal is just ahead, then at the current speed of human beings, we can collide with it head-on in two months.

Understanding the seriousness of the situation, as soon as they received the information from the detection spacecraft, the relevant scientists on the Tianqin and other warships and research ships immediately returned to their jobs and began to analyze the unknown information.

The first is where the information comes from.

Tachyons have strong directionality. The direction in which the detector of the human exploration spacecraft receives the signal must be the direction in which the signal came from. This is very easy to judge.

It came from the side and front of the direction in which the human fleet was heading, with an angle of about forty-five degrees.

Tachyon detection is very convenient and can detect information outside the light cone, but it also has a disadvantage. That is, if the opponent is a fleet, then when you detect the opponent, the opponent will also know your existence, which is equivalent to both parties being lit up in the opponent's radar at the same time.

Of course, if the other party is a detector, then the humans that are now illuminated should only be the detection spacecraft team that received the tachyon signal, because the main body of the human fleet is at a certain distance from the detection spacecraft and has not received the tachyon signal.

Humans who looked at the form of the tachyon signal soon discovered the strangeness of the signal. It was in segments, and there was an obvious time interval between each segment, but the length of each interval was different. The reason for this signal was that the tachyon transmitter did not emit tachyons continuously, but instead cycled through a fire-and-stop cycle.

This emission pattern seems to be intentional, as tachyon detection does not require such emission. Humans who see this signal pattern feel that it is more like a signal pattern of 1s and 0s than the continuous tachyon signal of tachyon detection.

What do you mean?
Human scientists are somewhat puzzled.

(End of this chapter)