Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 387 Negative Matter
Chen Ming borrowed dozens of devices from the Climate Transformation Department to monitor the status of stars around them.

They were evenly installed around the stars of the three star systems where Leviathans existed, ensuring that the monitoring of these devices would not miss any corner of the star.

As long as the Leviathan hidden inside shows any sign of showing up, these devices will immediately transmit the news to his mind.

As long as the radiation level in the galaxy does not drop, the threat of the three-color Leviathan will hang over his head.

He must be well prepared for early warning and be prepared to respond at any time.

It’s a pity that he really can’t do anything about the three Leviathans for the time being.

We can only hope that the project team studying the planet-eating body will make faster progress.

Thoroughly understand the structure of the StarEater as soon as possible and replicate it.

As long as this technology comes out, it will no longer be impossible for Chen Ming to directly enter the interior of a star, and the Leviathan hidden inside the star must die.

So Chen Ming was wondering whether he should go to the StarEater project team to urge them.

After all, if he wants to get rid of the Leviathan hiding in the star in advance, the key lies in the projects of the Star Devourer.

But after thinking about it, Chen Ming decided to forget it.

The project team is currently on a space station in close orbit around a star in the Gaia system.

Chen Ming had not been there before when he was strolling around, but he knew that the StarEater Project Group on that space station had several thousand people working on different sophisticated projects, and they also worked part-time to provide real-time stellar data to the Climate Transformation Department.

He went there specially to urge progress, and he didn't know how many people were in a hurry.

And more importantly, he has no targeted weapons.

Chen Ming prefers not to do things himself if he can avoid it, unless there is direct danger.

He wanted to solve the problem himself because he was worried that Leviathan might go directly to the Gaia galaxy to cause trouble.

But since Leviathan has chosen to hide for some reason, we might as well wait and see.

Let's see if Leviathan will make any moves in the near future, and see if he can take advantage of these few days to get some new weapons and equipment to adapt to the jellyfish-shaped Leviathan.

After waiting for the same three hours as before and confirming that the three Leviathans had no intention of coming out of the star.

Chen Ming quickly summarized what had just happened.

Then the news of the appearance of the new Leviathan was spread back to the empire.

To be honest, in addition to worrying that Leviathan might cause him unexpected losses, Chen Ming was actually quite looking forward to what kind of benefits Leviathan's corpse could bring him.

He had encountered a total of three Leviathans before.

Scavenger robot, plane nightmare, star eater, or as the survivors call it, star eater, are all similar.

The scavenger robot gave him a broken nanoforge, a nanorobot self-optimization program, and a behemoth with combat power that was at least at the Leviathan level.

Although the nano forge was not dismantled by Chen Ming, it can still play its due role.

Chen Ming’s industrial buildings on the non-habitable planets in the Origin Galaxy and Gaia Galaxy were all built with it.

That self-optimization program is still on Chen Ming's own research list, just like before.

As for the scavengers' own fighting power, Chen Ming did not expect too much.

And the things that were taken away from the Nightmare of the Plane were more in line with Chen Ming's own needs.

He learned new spatial abilities from the Nightmare of the Plane, including two different methods of maintaining spatial stability and forcibly tearing space apart.

He also obtained half of the body of the Plane Nightmare, which could be used to research other technologies.

For example, the psychic shield technology that he is most concerned about has already produced practical theoretical results.

It may take time to manufacture a psychic shield generator from a technical perspective, but from the perspective of a psychic, replicating a psychic shield is not a difficult task.

Chen Ming has now mastered the psychic shield technology that he can use personally, which is one of the sources of his confidence in fighting Leviathan alone.

As the last Leviathan that Chen Ming solved, the StarEater had a slightly lower level of technological development.

But just the fact that the existence of the physophage fluid can create a Dyson sphere and provide an extra layer of protection for the Zerg fleet is already very good.

If he doesn't return the stellar matter in the egg sheath, he might have more ways to "eat stars".

Plus the projects that are still ongoing...

Chen Ming was just about to think about what the three jellyfish-shaped Leviathans might bring him after being dealt with.

The person in charge of Fan Chao took the initiative to contact him and said, "Mr. Chen Ming, our researchers have just read the information you sent."

"so?"

"So in their opinion, the jellyfish-shaped Leviathan might be some kind of electromagnetic or radiation life form, which is why the arc weapons carried by the Zerg fleet are ineffective."

"From the information you sent back, only live ammunition weapons caused actual damage."

"Live ammunition weapons may be the best option to deal with such a life form, but there are probably no live ammunition weapons that can deal with a Leviathan of this size at present."

"But the project team we are working with on the Plane Nightmare project may have some effect."

Chen Ming immediately recalled the detailed projects on the Plane Nightmare Space Station and asked, "Psychic Gravity Weapons?"

The person in charge of Fan Chao said: "Yes, our researchers analyzed your video and believed that a large-scale and high-mass entity attack might be effective."

"Psychic gravity weapons can also give live ammunition additional gravity, which is a significant improvement on live ammunition weapons."

"With the high-precision video you brought back, we can use the data in the video to conduct simulations to confirm whether those weapons can really cause damage to Leviathan."

"I have no opinion."

After Chen Ming accepted Fan Chao's invitation for cooperation.

He stayed in Fan Chao's research institute for five consecutive days.

I have to admit that the research environment here at the Fanchao Research Institute is indeed much better than his place.

After all, it is a research institute directly under the empire, and has been in operation for who knows how many years. However, it does not have a more academic atmosphere than Chen Ming's scientific research center, which has actually only been open for less than half a month.

But Chen Ming had nothing to be discouraged about. He always believed that he could build his colony.

However, during the collaborative research process, something happened that was quite unexpected for both Chen Ming and Fan Chao.

Just on the first day of the cooperation.

Chen Ming and a research team from Fan Chao spent some time together to conduct an in-depth analysis of the videos and various data he brought back.

Combined with Chen Ming's own direct experience of fighting Leviathan, he made a combined judgment and came to a conclusion.

That is, although this Leviathan does have a physical existence, its entity is more similar to the nightmare of the plane, an entity transformed from existence of other levels.

It sounds a bit abstract.

But if you think about it carefully, you will find that this conclusion is most likely correct.

The reason lies in the earliest situation when Chen Ming recorded it, this was the appearance of Leviathan.

The blue jellyfish Leviathan was born from a pulsar.

Pulsars are a type of neutron star, with a density so terrifying that it is close to that of a black hole.

How could a Leviathan born on such a planet be harmed by ordinary live ammunition? How could live ammunition harm a Leviathan born on a neutron star with a density close to that of a black hole?

But the fact is that the live ammunition fired by Chen Ming's Zerg fleet did cause some visible damage to the body of the blue jellyfish Leviathan.

Although the damage recovered quickly, it was obvious that its body density and strength were not that high.

Is this reasonable?

This is completely unreasonable.

It’s just that before, both Chen Ming and the top researchers at the Fanchao Institute subconsciously ignored this point.

After all, a Leviathan like the Plane Nightmare could be damaged by live ammunition, so no one thought there was anything wrong with live ammunition weapons harming this Leviathan.

But the situation of the Nightmare of the Plane is very special. It is the product of the existence of the black hole dimension that materializes after entering the normal universe. It itself is not a black hole.

Even if its body can be transformed into black hole matter, it is actually only related to the black hole dimension and does not have the density of a black hole.

Therefore, the difference in existence between the Nightmare of the Planes and the new Jellyfish Leviathan may be that one is from another dimension and the other is something in an existing dimension.

So after combining all this information, Chen Ming and Fan Chao both believed that the entity of Leviathan was not important.

That's just its concrete form.

It could actually be some kind of electromagnetic or radiation or optical type of creature.

After all, two similar ones with different colors were born behind it. The only difference between them at present is the color of light, that is, the difference in the frequency of light.

If you want to hurt it in a real sense, you cannot start from its entity, but from its essence.

So the next day, Chen Ming and Fan Chao's people completely overturned the research direction that had been decided at the beginning, and changed the original direction of researching what kind of weapons would be suitable for attacking Leviathan.

After a few days, I had a rough idea of ​​the direction.

It starts with three aspects: stopping the electromagnetic frequency band, absorbing the radiation band and forcibly changing the frequency of light.

Fan Chao originally wanted to say that large-scale energy hedging might be effective, but seeing the actual results of Chen Ming's subsequent thousands of battleships self-destructing as if it were free, this approach did not seem to work.

Maybe there is some special protective measure or some special property that allows Leviathan to ignore the damage of self-destruction.

We still have to use several newly speculated methods to target Leviathan.

Although this makes previous research basically worthless, research that is meaningless in the first place has no value if it is gone.

At most, Chen Ming would have to spend a few more days on research.

Fortunately, the Jellyfish Leviathan has not made any moves in the past few days, otherwise Chen Ming would have to take action himself before he could come up with any targeted technology.

Chen Ming, who is currently in Fanchao, still plans to continue working on targeted weapons.

Some of Fan Chao's researchers are not psychics and need sleep.

But he can go for quite a long time without rest when necessary.

After all, he was not physically tired, the only thing that was truly tired was his spirit.

As long as you can hold on mentally, staying awake till the end of time will not be a problem.

But just before Chen Ming did this.

He suddenly received a message from the Afterglow Core, which was responsible for controlling the Nightmare Space Station.

A research team had an application to submit to him for his personal approval.

Along with their application was a brief version of their research report.

After seeing the content of the research report, Chen Ming noticed that this was the application from the same group that had applied for research facilities with him a few days ago.

Judging from the content of their research report, they used the equipment they had applied for previously to conduct several batches of experiments on the space station.

Eventually, they successfully analyzed a special substance that objectively existed in the corpse of the Nightmare of the Plane, but had not been discovered by them until now. The team called it negative matter.

According to the report, the research team believes that negative matter can be regarded as a special kind of antimatter.

But when it comes into contact with normal matter, it does not annihilate, but fuses.

The properties of the fused objects will change. Although there is no structural change, they will become more resilient overall. This is the same for almost everything, and it is very worth studying.

Chen Ming immediately found this thing very interesting. It happened that most of the members of the research team he was working with had gone to rest, and only a few who were working on the night shift were still processing the data that should have been left over during the day.

Chen Ming can go there in person when he has time.

Anyway, there is no result here for the time being, and it doesn’t take much time to go to the space station.

After Chen Ming greeted everyone, he used his psychic power to directly reach the Nightmare Space Station of the Plane.

I went to the newly expanded area of ​​the space station and found the research team working in the laboratory set up in this area.

The team that had received the notification that Chen Ming was coming were already waiting at the laboratory entrance.

After Chen Ming indicated that there was no need for such a grand ceremony, the team leader asked the team members to do their own things, and he took Chen Ming to where they usually worked and showed them the results of their research.

Some materials fused with negative matter and stored in a vacuum isolation layer include a piece of pure iron with a mass of one kilogram, the same mass of soil, and the same mass of other materials, etc.

And, a control group with exactly the same materials, also stored in a vacuum isolation layer.

Through the data left on the console next to him, Chen Ming could easily see that the properties of the materials in the experimental group and the same materials in the control group had changed in quality. Although the changes were extremely subtle, they did exist.

Also placed next to the console is a detection device that the team made with the help of Yu Hui, which can be used to detect negative matter.

The object of detection is the entire space station.

Judging from the results displayed by the equipment, the entire space station has been completely contaminated by negative matter.

But Chen Ming was unable to perceive this substance specifically. No matter how hard he tried using his own perception, he could not sense the existence of this negative substance.

And if it's just data on paper, it doesn't mean anything.

So Chen Ming turned to the team leader and asked, "How did you find out?"

The team leader shook his head and said, "We didn't discover it. This substance found us on its own initiative."

"We just applied for a batch of materials a few days ago, only to find that the materials had changed within a few days after being shipped from other places."

"We originally thought it was a material problem, so we applied for a new batch and the results were the same except the problem was exactly the same."

"Then there's the third batch of materials. This time we had the cargo ship wait outside the space station. We went up there to test it ourselves and only then did we let... no, let Yu Hui deliver the materials, but..."

"So we suspect that the Plane Nightmare might have a substance similar to antimatter that cannot be observed."

"Then we borrowed some equipment from other groups to do more testing, and we confirmed that this substance does exist."

Chen Ming looked down at the floor of the space station beneath his feet, stimulated his own spiritual power, and personally sensed the quality of the materials that made up the structure of the space station.

It turned out that it was just as the team leader said, the physical strength of all materials on the space station had changed.

This negative matter really exists, and it has been integrated into the entire space station.

Even though he cannot directly feel this negative matter, it does exist.

Chen Ming's gaze suddenly turned to the control group in the vacuum isolation layer next to him.

"Negative matter can't propagate in a vacuum, right?"

"Yes, that's why we put these things here for comparison."

"Row."

Chen Ming felt relieved.

Because up to now, the Nightmare Space Station has only transported things from the outside to the inside, and has never taken anything out.

Therefore, the negative matter carried by the Nightmare of the Plane should only be found on this space station.

At most, there might be a little bit on the spaceship of the Shining Civilization that Chen Ming pulled out from the Nightmare of the Plane.

However, Chen Ming did not drive that spaceship everywhere. It was also left at the Nightmare Space Station of the Plane as a research object.

“So your application…”

The team leader immediately said: "We hope to reach the ground and conduct a slightly larger-scale experiment."

"You see, since the space station has been fully integrated with this negative matter for such a long time, and nothing has happened, we think that we can temporarily treat this matter as not too dangerous."

"We want to conduct larger-scale experiments, and based on the conclusions drawn from the experiments, we can then conduct stable detection and subsequent research on negative substances."

Chen Ming confirmed: "Are you sure it's safe?"

"Yes, please read our experimental log."

The team leader pressed a few buttons on the operating table next to him and produced a log with hundreds of pages of densely written content.

All the contents are the results of various fusion experiments.

It can be seen that there was no problem in any of the experiments.

It can only be said that it was thanks to Chen Ming that a large amount of surplus space was created when he expanded the space station, and because this group applied first, Chen Ming specifically gave them more space.

As a result, the group had plenty of experimental space, and almost all of it was utilized by them.

And it seems from these experimental logs.

The team also has some more detailed results that were not written down in the brief research report.

For example, they judged that negative matter is most likely the medium of the black hole dimension, similar to the medium in the phase space that blocks the dispersion of radiation energy.

Humans are currently unable to explore the dimensions of black holes, but they can indirectly explore the dimensions of black holes through negative matter and indirectly study black holes.

And after matter fuses with negative matter, it undergoes changes in physical properties.

These substances also exhibit a unique stability in spatial dimensions.

A kind of stability that is more difficult to be affected by jump fluctuations, as if it is fixed in place by some force.

They also found out that negative matter has no direct effect on living organisms.

They can only fuse dead objects, and there seems to be no disadvantages at the moment, only benefits.

Such valuable negative matter forced Chen Ming to consider setting up an experimental site on the planet.

But the fact that this team's research links negative matter to black hole dimensions is still a bit too dangerous.

It is unlikely that Chen Ming would arrange them directly to the No. 1 Scientific Research Center Area.

However, Chen Ming immediately thought of an alternative method.

He could place the team on Gaia's moon.

Gaia’s satellite is also a habitable planet, and Chen Ming has not yet figured out its use.

Since there is a demand, why not just set up a new experimental site specifically for testing this group?

Chen Ming has no shortage of resources, so it is no problem for him to set up a testing site on his own.

So Chen Ming agreed.

But he also gave very strict conditions.

The entire security and transportation process of the experimental materials is handed over to the Afterglow Center. The entire experiment needs to be carried out under surveillance. The nightmare materials of the plane are prohibited from being taken out, and all situations that may cause large-scale leakage of negative matter beyond expectations have been restricted by Chen Ming.

Chen Ming also said that it would keep a close watch on the group, both for the safety of the experiment and for their own safety.

The team leader had no objection.

So Chen Ming turned around and left the space station and began to prepare the environment for studying negative matter.

The team leader quickly gathered more than 20 team members and said, "Director Chen agreed. We can proceed to the next step of research."

After a short cheer, the team leader said, "Take safety measures and don't let the substances leak out for no reason."

The team members agreed without hesitation.

Although the negative matter produced by the body of the Plane Nightmare in their research was not dangerous, it was very stable.

But no one knows whether there will be other impacts in the future, so this is the safest way to do it.

"Pack up and we'll go to the ground tomorrow."

The next day came in a blink of an eye.

The team leader and members have arrived at the surface of the Gaia satellite.

Here Chen Ming specially prepared a complete and safe experimental site for them, a double-layer dome.

This is the building where Chen Ming used to stay often. It has very good isolation between the inside and the outside.

This double-layer structure was created by Chen Ming by evacuating the space between the two domes into a vacuum.

After all, it seems that vacuum is a very effective means of isolating negative matter, otherwise the nightmare of the planes in the black hole would have spread the negative matter throughout the universe long ago.

The team leader was currently standing on a hill near the dome, observing the dome environment.

At the same time, he was watching an extremely heavy spaceship slowly descending to the ground.

Under the protection of a large number of mechanical bodies, a piece of the Plane Nightmare's corpse fragment stored in a vacuum isolation chamber was transported into the laboratory inside the dome.

"looking at what?"

A team member's voice suddenly sounded behind the team leader.

The team leader responded without even turning his head: "I'm looking at where the safety measures may not be in place. If negative matter leaks out, even if nothing happens, we're doomed."

"If I really find a problem, I plan to apply for additional reinforcement."

The team member said indifferently: "Team Leader, you are really worrying too much. I have never seen you like this on the space station."

"With such a large corpse lying there, there's no telling how much negative matter it emits. If something was going to happen, it would have happened a long time ago. How could it have waited until the planet?"

The team leader's eyes suddenly became a little confused, but soon returned to normal.

"Indeed, but safety measures must be taken, and it is best to make them stricter."

The team member shrugged: "As long as you like."

There would be no harm in setting it up a little safer.

(End of this chapter)