Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 724: Addicted to Talking About Pictures

The unknown civilization seemed to be addicted to image communication and seemed to be able to understand the meaning of the digital animated images sent by humans. After humans sent the animated images in the form of digital signals, they quickly replied with several digital animated images.

The image showed that the human fleet was moving from outside the star system to the inner galaxy, but was blocked by a digital image as big as a planet during the voyage. The image was sometimes bright and sometimes dark, showing a circle with a tic-tac-toe symbol inside, and then the human fleet stopped.

Another picture showed several small spaceships flying out of the human fleet and also flying towards the interior of the star system. In the middle of the journey, they were also blocked by a digital image as big as a planet, but this image showed a circle without a pound sign inside. The spaceships did not stop but continued to move forward.

Oh. Now humans understand it. It seems to be somewhat similar to a traffic signal. One of the symbols should mean no passage, and the other means passage is allowed.

The unknown civilization has agreed to allow humans to send a team of exploration spacecraft to communicate.

Sure enough, after humans sent out the exploration spacecraft team, the exploration spacecraft team of the unknown civilization was allowed to pass.

The exploration spacecraft team sent out by humans this time is not unmanned, but has humans on board. After all, they are going there for communication, and drones certainly won't work. There are certainly risks in doing so, but it is very necessary, and the relevant experts on board the exploration spacecraft also volunteered to go.

Of course, even if no one volunteered to go, they would still be ordered to do so. Humans could not live in comfort all the time when they reached the stars. To put it bluntly, if we talk about danger, the First Fleet of Humankind is in great danger now, but humans must face it.

Human beings have never lacked courage.

The exploration spacecraft team passed the exploration spacecraft team of the unknown civilization and headed for the target star system, but they did not all rush in. Instead, they stopped a spacecraft in the void after sailing for about one light year. The role of this spacecraft was obvious, that is, communication relay.

The place where the first fleet of mankind encountered the unknown civilization's exploration spacecraft team was about 7 light-years away from the target star system, and the maximum effective range of tachyon communication was only 2 light-years, so a relay station was necessary.

The unknown civilization was apparently silent on this point, and they did not stop humans from stopping their spaceships as relay stations.

Such actions also improved its impression in the minds of humans. It did not block the arrangement of real-time communication lines, which seemed to indicate that the other party did not have any bad tricks up its sleeve.

As the exploration spacecraft team went deeper, especially when they reached the outer edge of the target star system, the situation here was finally clearly seen by humans. The first to enter the field of view of the exploration spacecraft team's tachyon detector was a fleet of about 500,000 ships. After they entered the field of view of the optical detector, humans found that their construction style was the same as the broadcasting spacecraft they encountered before and the exploration spacecraft teams that were still communicating with the first fleet of humans through images. At first glance, they knew they were from the same force.

In the tachyon detection field of view, the human exploration spacecraft team not only detected this fleet, but also other unknown warships in this star system. The exact number is unknown, because it did not enter the optical detection field of view, so the construction style is also unknown. It is not known whether it is a fleet of unknown civilization, but their number is at least 4 million. After the human exploration spacecraft team arrived at the target star system, they did not have the opportunity to continue to approach and observe directly, because the fleet of 500,000 warships was already oncoming.

The two sides just stayed in the space outside the star system, looking at each other from afar in the starry sky hundreds of kilometers apart.

This distance is no different from face-to-face communication. Logically, electromagnetic waves should be enough for communication. However, unexpectedly, the human exploration spacecraft team received the same tachyon signal as before, and it was still a digital dynamic image encoded with ternary information as before.

"Are you addicted to talking about pictures?"

When the information was transmitted to the Lyra through the relay station, everyone was speechless. What was going on with this unknown civilization that they kept communicating in this way?

However, even though they were speechless, they did not interfere with the communication with the exploration spacecraft team, because there was a delay in the communication between Tianqin and the exploration spacecraft team 7 light years away. Tachyon communication was almost real-time within its effective range, but the signal transfer at the relay station took time, so remote communication with the other party on Tianqin was far less convenient than with the exploration spacecraft team.

Although there are only three relay stations and the delay is only about thirty seconds, it is actually not advisable to communicate through the relay stations all the time. The reason is that the relay stations are operated by small spacecraft, and if the small spacecraft wants to maintain the status of relay stations, it must maintain the full power operation of the grand unified force field inside it. In addition, the reception, conversion and transmission of relay tachyons must be maintained, and its energy consumption is higher than that of normal warp speed navigation. Therefore, this relay communication method is not sustainable.

For this reason, it is actually very difficult to use relay communications to hypothesize a low-latency communication network between star systems. Building a large "tachyon antenna" within a star system is not a big problem. The problem lies in the relay communication platforms in the void between star systems. They must rely on supply ships to supply them with antimatter fuel, otherwise they will soon lose their relay communication function.

It can only be antimatter fuel, because the energy level of nuclear fusion cannot stably produce a grand unified force field.

Interstellar transportation also requires antimatter fuel as the cost of warp travel, so it is feasible to establish such a low-latency communication system across several star systems, but the maintenance cost is extremely high, at least from the perspective of a Level 4 civilization.

Of course, if there is a settled civilization that really needs this, it is not impossible to do it. After all, there is a demand, and maybe those relay stations can be developed into a void fortress. However, it is obvious that a wandering civilization like humans does not need it, and this unknown civilization does not seem to do so either.

In other words, the communication between the human exploration spacecraft team and the unknown civilization is still going on. Humans also follow the principles of communication with strange civilizations, first teaching basic mathematical cognition and corresponding mathematical symbols, then the textual expression of the laws basically discovered at the primitive civilization level derived from various simple basic physical experiments, and finally from the shallow to the deep.
If the other party responds to humans in the same way, then everyone's language and writing have something in common, and after more communication and polishing, they will be able to communicate with each other.

For any alien with normal logic, this method of communication will basically be no problem. In the past, humans communicated with the Kuntai Civilization, the Nair Civilization, and the Chiyan Civilization step by step in this way. It is effective and has a precedent, so humans are very reassured.

(End of this chapter)